Air Algérie Flight 5017

Air Algérie Flight 5017
Accident summary
The accident aircraft in January 2013
Date	24 July 2014
Summary	Crashed off course; under investigation
Site	Southeast of Gossi, Mali
Passengers	110
Crew	6
Fatalities	116 (all)
Survivors	0
Aircraft type	McDonnell Douglas MD-83
Operator	Swiftair for Air Algérie
Registration	EC-LTV
Flight origin	Ouagadougou Airport, Burkina Faso
Destination	Houari Boumediene Airport, Algiers, Algeria

Air Algérie Flight 5017 (AH5017/DAH5017) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to Algiers, Algeria, which crashed in Mali, near Gossi, on 24 July 2014. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 with 110 passengers and 6 crew on board, operated by Swiftair for Air Algérie, disappeared from radar about fifty minutes after take-off. There were no survivors.

Malian authorities are conducting an investigation with the assistance of France's Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile.

Accident

Ouagadougou Airport

Gossi

The departure airport (green pin) and Gossi in Mali, near the crash site

Flight 5017 departed from Ouagadougou Airport at 1:15 local time (UTC) on 24 July 2014.^[1] It was scheduled to land at Houari Boumediene Airport, Algiers, at 5:10.^[2]

The aircraft reached cruise altitude, flight level 310 (FL310), 22 minutes after departure and attained its target speed of 280 knots (IAS). About two minutes later, it began to gradually lose speed, and, though the speed did eventually drop to 200 knots, the aircraft maintained FL310. After an unspecified length of time had passed, the aircraft began to descend, and the speed dropped to about 160 knots. Afterwards, the aircraft entered a left-hand turn and began to lose altitude more rapidly, thus spiralling down. The flight data recording stopped at 1:47; at the time, the aircraft was at an altitude of 1,600 feet (490 m) and a speed of 380 knots.^[1] It crashed into the ground at 270 m above sea level about a second later.^[3]^[4]

On 28 July, it was revealed that the flight crew had asked to return to Burkina Faso, after first requesting to deviate from course because of bad weather.^[5] There was a mesoscale convective system in the area at the time,^[6] and the aircraft had deviated to the left of its course to avoid it.^[3] Satellite images apparently identifying the light flare from the aircraft impact at the margins of the storm were captured.^[7]

Initially there were conflicting reports of the location of the crash. The aircraft's flight route took it over Mali, and it was reported to have disappeared between Gao and Tessalit.^[8] French forces reported detecting wreckage of the aircraft in an area between Gao and Kidal, in a desert region that is difficult to access.^[9] France sent a military unit to secure the wreckage of the Air Algérie plane.^[10] Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta said wreckage had been found in the country's northern desert, between Aguelhok and Kidal.^[11] There were also reports of wreckage being found near the town of Tilemsi in Mali, with officials from Algeria, Burkina Faso, and France having issued conflicting details.^[12]

Investigation

The Malian authorities have opened an investigation, with the President of the Mali Commission of Inquiry (French: Président de la Commission d'enquête du Mali) as the director, and the French Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) will provide technical assistance.^[13]

On 27 July, BEA investigators arrived at the crash site to collect evidence.^[14] Both black boxes have been recovered;^[15] data from the flight data recorder (FDR) has been read out. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was damaged in the impact and repaired, but "the recordings that [the magnetic tape] contains are unusable, due apparently to a recorder malfunction, with no link to the damage that resulted from the accident".^[1] As a result, the investigation will have to mine alternative sources, like records of air-traffic transmissions.^[3]

On 7 August, the investigation team held a press conference at BEA's headquarters in Paris. They outlined the team structure (three international working groups assigned to the "aircraft", "systems" and "operations" each) and presented an abridged timeline and a reconstruction of the aircraft's flight path. An interim report was scheduled to be published mid-September.^[1] Following the conference, Gérard Feldzer, an aviation expert, told BFMTV that the aircraft trajectory recorded by the FDR strongly suggested the plane had stalled in bad weather.^[16]

On 20 September, the BEA released an interim report into the crash. The report contained data extracted from the FDR, as well as an explanation why the CVR is mostly unusable: the CVR did record the cockpit noises and conversations on the magnetic tape, but without erasing the existing content first, so that the record is a mix of numerous hours of recording on a 32 minutes tape. Parts of the radio exchanges with ATC could be made out, but it is not known whether the remainder of the cockpit conversations, for which no external recording exists, will be able to be determined.^[4]

On 2 April 2015, the BEA announced that a consensus had emerged that erratic and erroneous values of the EPR appeared for both engines two to three minutes after levelling off at an altitude of 31,000 ft. The EPR is the main parameter for engine power management, and is derived from pressure sensors at the engine inlets. The sensors had probably become clogged with ice in this case. Such icing is normally prevented by a hot-air system, which likely was not activated by the aircrew during climb and cruise, according to BEA "analysis of the available data". The faulty EPR values caused the engine controllers to limit the thrust to much less than required to maintain sufficient airspeed for stability at the altitude that the autopilot tried to maintain by increasing the angle of attack until stall occurred. Twenty seconds after the initial stall, the plane suddenly rolled sharply left to almost full inversion as the autopilot disengaged, and pitched nose down to near vertical. The BEA notes that "the recorded parameters indicate that there were no stall recovery manœuvres by the crew", while the flight control surface deflections remained those that would normally intend nose-up and right-roll. The BEA noted two previous similar incidents involving MD-82 and MD-83 aircraft, where the aircrews were alert enough to notice the loss of airspeed and intervene before loss of control.^[17]

The BEA is slated to release its final report at the end of 2015.

Passengers and crew

People on board by nationality (Air Algérie count)^[18]
Country	Persons
Algeria	6
Belgium	1
Burkina Faso	28
Cameroon	1
Canada	5
Egypt	1
France	52
Germany	4
Lebanon	6
Luxembourg	2
Mali	1
Nigeria	1
Spain	6
Switzerland	1
United Kingdom	1
Total	116

There were 110 passengers on the plane; of those, 52 were French citizens, at least 33 of whom were French military personnel serving in Africa and Mali including three senior intelligence officials.^[19]^[20] A senior Hezbollah leader who had been posing as a businessman in Senegal and Burkina Faso was also on board.^[19]^[20]^[21] Others came from Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Algeria, Spain, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg.^[18] An Air Algérie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference that all passengers were in transit to Europe, the Middle East, or Canada.^[22] All six crew members were Spanish.^[23]^[24] The number of persons holding multiple citizenship onboard was apparently high. The Lebanese embassy in Abidjan estimated the number of Lebanese citizens on the flight was at least 20. Some of these may have dual nationality.^[25] One Chilean had dual French nationality.^[26]

Multiple news outlet reported that Cuban President Raul Castro's daughter, Fidel Castro's Niece, Mariela Castro, was on the doomed flight. It was later revealed that she was on a meeting, "happy and healthy". There were also some "controversies" about the number of French citizens and number of passengers on board.^[27]^[28]

On 25 July, French President François Hollande stated that there were no survivors.^[29]

Aircraft

The accident aircraft in Austral Líneas Aéreas colours photographed March 2008

The aircraft involved in the accident was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, MSN 53190, line number 2148. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines and first flew in June 1996.^[2]

The aircraft was acquired by Swiftair, a charter flight operator, and reregistered EC-LTV in 2012.^[30] It was wet-leased to Air Algérie on 22 June 2014 to provide additional capacity for the summer season.^[2]^[30]^[31]^[32]

At the time of its loss, EC-LTV had acquired in excess of 32,000 cycles.^{[lower-alpha 1]} The director of the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) of France, Patrick Gandil, said the plane had been checked in France "two or three days ago" and that it was "in good condition".^[33]

Aftermath

Search for the crash site

The wreckage was found southeast of Gossi, Mali, and United Nations personnel moved to secure the crash site on 25 July.^[14] French television showed images of the wreckage site taken by a soldier from Burkina Faso. The brief footage showed a desolate area with scattered debris that was unrecognizable. There were bits of twisted metal but no identifiable parts such as the fuselage or tail, or victims' bodies. Scrubby vegetation could be seen scattered in the background. A French Reaper drone based in Niger spotted the wreckage after getting alerts from Burkina Faso and Malian soldiers. Burkina Faso soldiers were reportedly the first to reach the site. The country's prime minister, Luc Adolphe Tiao, reviewed videos of the wreckage site and said identifying the victims will be challenging.^[34]

Legal action

Prosecutors in Paris opened a preliminary "involuntary homicide" investigation.^[35]

Reactions

Because most of those on board were French citizens, France declared three days of national mourning following the crash. Flags flew at half mast on every public building from 28 July for three days. Algeria also declared a 72-hour mourning period.

Burkina Faso also began two days of mourning over the crash which killed 28 Burkina Faso citizens. During the mourning period, flags in Bukina Faso flew at half mast while all public celebrations were cancelled. The Burkinabé Minister for National Security assured the families of victims that the government will do all it can to shed light on the circumstances leading to the crash.^[36]^[37]