Kenya Air Crash: Contaminated Fuel or engine failure listed as possible causes

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The possibility of engine failure or contaminated fuel causing this crash is raised in this report. Could airplanes be getting bad fuel as in Australia?:

Just 10 Survivors Found In Kenya Airways Crash

5:15 am PST, 31 January 2000

Despite the best efforts of rescuers who have been searching the waters of the Atlantic off the Ivory coast, just 10 survivors of the ill-fated Kenya Airways Airbus jet-liner have been recovered.

The jet, carrying a total of 179 people, plunged into the water just three minutes after it left Abidjan airport enroute to Lagos at around 9 pm Sunday night.

A rescue effort was immediately launched with helicopters and boats scouring the choppy seas in the black of night. Around 90 bodies have so far been located by the search crews and reports indicate that many of them have been badly mutilated by the impact of the crash.

The cause of the crash is not yet clear although survivors and eye-witnesses on the ground both observed that the plane failed to gain height and appeared to be lacking power.

Aviation experts have suggested likely causes of this behavior could be the failure of an engine, possibly due to bird-strike; or contaminated fuel which might have affected both engines.

The black box flight recorder from the plane has yet to be recovered.

http://7am.com/cgi-bin/wires02.cgi?1000_00013101.htm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 01, 2000

Answers

Contaminated fuel ala Australia would require more than one A/C to show signs of contamination. One would expect many planes fueled from the same contaminated source to have engine problems.

So far Kenya Air crash resembles the Korean Cargo747 that crashed in UK, both failed to gain altitude right after take off. CVR & FDR data would help.

-- spaceman spiff (spiff@space.com), February 01, 2000.


'tis a sad day indeed when we now need to come to tb2000 to get the latest news on a trajedy of this type. Thanks for the update. See Media Coverage for my opinion on the media's pathetic and hypocritical coverage on this issue.

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), February 01, 2000.

The fuel contamination issue was raised in a report on the Libyan Oil field plane that crashed a couple of weeks ago. The black boxes were recovered shortly thereafter and there has been silence concerning the cause of the crash ever since. I believe it killed 23 people. In the last couple of days, there have been two major airline disasters and three commercial jetliner emergencies. here's the story on the British Airways problems:

Three Emergencies In 3 Days For British Airways 5:25 am PST, 31 January 2000

Concern is growing and an inquiry has been launched after the third British Airways plane in three days was forced to make an emergency landing Monday.

In the latest incident, a 747 jumbo jet suffered an in-flight engine failure while enroute from Washington DC to Heathrow Airport. Airline officials say that there was no danger to passengers and a textbook landing was performed despite the engine having been shut down.

Both earlier incidents had involved the world's only commercial super- sonic passenger jet, the Concorde. On Sunday, a British Airways Concorde was forced to turn back to Heathrow after a warning light came on in the cockpit shortly after take-off. The light turned out to be a false alarm.

Another BA Concorde suffered an engine failure during its approach to Heathrow on a flight from Barbados. Again, the plane managed to land safely with the airline emphasizing that the plane is quiet capable of flying with as many as three engines out.

On Monday, British Airlines announced that it had replaced the engines on one of its Concordes following contamination during the repainting of the plane. Any suggestion of a linkage between the contamination of the engines on this plane and the incidents of this weekend was denied by the airline. They also denied that any of the three incidents were in any way related to each other.

http://7am.com/cgi-bin/wires02.cgi?1000_00013102.htm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 01, 2000.


Interested Spectator...I couldn't agree more. Thanks for the posts and the link to the Kenya paper! It's not just coverage on disaster like this. The media is failing to cover anything that might be detrimental to their corporate owners and customers. The massive Kentucky oil spill last Thursday (possibly 1,000,000 gallons) which has been completely ignored by CNN/CNBC etc, is another prime example. Aloha!

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 01, 2000.

Carl Jenkins:

You're welcome.

Here are a few directories of newspapers around the world.

Alpha Complete News Index

Internationa l Newspapers

ecola news stand

ajr newslink

and one of my favorite newspapers from the other side of the world, that gives excellent news, often about what's going on back here that you won't find in the mainstream.

Dawn (from Pakistan>

-- Interested Spectator (is@the_ring.side), February 01, 2000.



Interested Spectator, thanks for the cool links :).

-- Lurkess (Lurkess@Lurking.Net), February 01, 2000.

"It's a small world." I just learned a few minutes ago that the husband of a professional acquaintance (who works in a different U.S. state) died in the Kenya crash. I never met him but had chatted with my acquaintance in the past about married life. They have at least one young child, too. Just awful, makes me want to give my wife an extra hug when I get home tonight.

More "it's a small world": the former mentor of a colleague in my office was aboard the Swissair flight that crashed off Nova Scotia a year ago. I had met him once at a professional gathering.

What I find remarkable is that I now am one or zero "degrees of separation" from people who have died in commercial air crashes; until last year I had no such connections. Probably just a reflection of air travel as a common mode of travel in the modern world, and my professional/social position, but it does make one shiver.

Be well, drive safely, get home alive tonight and give your significant others a little extra attention.

--Andre in southcentral Pennsylvania

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@health.state.pa.us), February 01, 2000.


All the statistics you ever wanted to know about commercial flights, accidents and safety since 1970.

Latest updates on Alanskan and Kanya flights included.

Note that in January 2000, there were 3 fatal commercial accidents reported worldwide, 4 in December 1999, 1 in Nov. '99, 1 in Oct. '99 then 1 in Aug. '99. etc.

http://airsafe.com/events /last_15.htm (for most recent accidents worldwide)

http://airsafe.com/(for main statistic/info page)

-- (helping@home.com), February 01, 2000.


Helpin at home and Spectator, Thanks for the great links,

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 01, 2000.

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