WASHINGTON (Islam Online) -Investigation has begun to find out what caused the Kenya Airways Jetliner to crash, killing169 passengers. A flight data recorder from the Jetliner was recovered. Investigators hope information contained in the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder will help them determine what caused the Airbus 310 with 179 passengers and crew on board to plunge into the Atlantic on Sunday, minutes after taking off from Abidjan.
Officials said that most of the more than 70 bodies recovered thus far are those of Nigerians who were scheduled to land in Lagos, Nigeria, before the overnight flight to Nairobi.
Passengers were from at least 13 African countries as well as Japan, Britain, Italy, France, Canada and the United States. So far, survivors included three Nigerians, a Kenyan, a Rwandan, a Gambian, an Indian and a Frenchman who swam to shore from the crash site. The rest were found clinging to floating wreckage and were rescued by fisherman and powerboat operators. The rescuers took to the sea when the plane went down in the Atlantic Ocean just after taking off from Abidjan, the Ivory Coast capital.
"I'm very happy now," said S. Kaira Yatabaray, 60, after learning that his brother Hajie Camara, a 31-year-old Gambian businessman, had survived the crash. Yatabaray had come to a Nairobi hotel where Kenya Airways had established a crisis center for relatives of those aboard the plane. Osman Niangadou, whose two brothers were on the flight, accompanied Yatabaray.
Upon hearing of the crash, Niangadou, a native of Mali, said he was not worried. He was certain that his brothers, Kade and Mamadou Cisse, were at the intermediate stop on the Nairobi-Abidjan round trip in Lagos. "I was thinking, they are not on it," he said. Then he heard that the plane had bypassed Lagos because of poor visibility due to the harmattan, the seasonal wind that fills the West African sky with sand from the Sahara Desert.
When the short list of survivors was read aloud at the airport in Lagos, relatives and friends of passengers reacted with wails and anguished shouts. "There was a substantial number of Nigerians on board," said an airline official.
Technical assessment teams from France, Kenya and Airbus Industries - which marketed the A-310 as "the world's most profitable 200-seater" - rushed to the Ivory Coast to assist officials there in determining what caused the crash. Officials declined to speculate on why the aircraft plunged into the Gulf of Guinea soon after takeoff.
The crash came less than three minutes after the jetliner left the seaside Felix Houphouet-Boigny International Airport at 9:08 p.m. (4:08 p.m. EST) in hazy weather. Air traffic controllers described a labored ascent and then a plunge into the sea before passengers could be advised to reach for life vests.
"Just after takeoff, the plane started having problems," said Samuel Agbe, a survivor from Nigeria. "It wasn't quite balanced, and the next thing we knew, we were in the water."
Kenya Airways officials said the plane, which had accumulated 58,000 flight hours in about 15,000 flights since 1986, had no known mechanical problems. Airline technical director Steve Clarke said the aircraft, which bore the registration tag 5-YBEN, was given a daylong maintenance check three days before the crash. "The aircraft was fully serviceable and fit for flight," Clarke declared.
The crash was Kenya Airways' first fatal accident since the airline was formed as a state-owned company in 1977. The Kenyan government retained a 22 percent interest when the airline went private in 1996, while the Dutch airline KLM (a code-sharing partner) is the largest stockholder, with a 26 percent share.
Kenya Airways carried 1 million passengers last year with a fleet of 10 aircraft: four long-haul Airbus A-310s of a type no longer made and with little relation to newer models being sold to U.S. airlines. The remaining six aircraft were Boeing 737s. On Friday, the airline announced plans to replace the Airbuses with Boeing 767s primarily to offer its passengers better in-flight entertainment systems.
Outside the Nairobi Inter-Continental Hotel, where the airline set up the crisis center, Kenyans lined the street two and three deep. They silently watched as relatives of the victims grieved for their lost ones.
Waseem Afzal, 29, emerged with shining eyes and a shy smile. He said his friend, Kenya Airways flight attendant Samira Mohamed, was not listed among the survivors but that her memory was something to cherish.
