Kenya Airways Flight 507
5Y-KYA, the aircraft involved in the accident at OR Tambo International Airport in January 2007 (January 2007).
Accident
Date5 May 2007
SummaryPilot error leading to loss of control
SiteMbanga Pongo, near Douala International Airport, Douala, Cameroon
3°57′21″N 9°45′03″E / 3.9557°N 9.7509°E / 3.9557; 9.7509
Aircraft
Aircraft typeBoeing 737-8AL
OperatorKenya Airways
IATA flight No.KQ507
ICAO flight No.KQA507
Call signKENYA 507
Registration5Y-KYA
Flight originPort Bouet Airport, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
StopoverDouala International Airport, Douala, Cameroon
DestinationJomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Kenya
Occupants114
Passengers108
Crew6
Fatalities114
Survivors0

Kenya Airways Flight 507 was a scheduled Abidjan–Douala–Nairobi passenger service, operated by Kenya Airways. On 5 May 2007, the Boeing 737–800 aircraft serving the flight crashed in the initial stage of its second leg, immediately after takeoff from Douala International Airport in Cameroon.[1][2][3]

The plane broke up into small pieces and came to rest mostly submerged in a mangrove swamp, 5.4 kilometres (3.4 mi; 2.9 nmi) to the south (176°) of the end of Douala International Airport's runway 12.[4][5] There were no survivors.[4][6][7] The investigation by the Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority determined that the pilots failed to notice and correct excessive bank following takeoff. This led to the loss of control and crash of the aircraft.[8]

History of the flight

Flight 507 was one of three scheduled to depart from Douala Airport around midnight that day, with two other flights operated by Cameroon Airlines and Royal Air Maroc.[9][10][11] The aircrew of the Cameroonian and the Moroccan companies elected to wait for the weather to improve, while the Kenya Airways crew decided to depart, as they had already been delayed over an hour and the pilot felt that the weather had improved enough for departure.[9][12] The pilot in command nonetheless failed to seek takeoff clearance from the Airport Control Tower and the aircraft departed Douala at 00:06 local time on 5 May (23:06 UTC on 4 May);[13]: 8, 11 [12] the flight was due to arrive in Nairobi at 06:15 local time (03:15 UTC).[4][14][15]

Once airborne, the plane had a tendency to bank right, which the captain countered by using his control wheel.[13]: 12  Twenty-four seconds after take-off, at an altitude of 1,000 ft (300 m), the captain let go of the control wheel,[13]: 12  and eighteen seconds later called out "Ok, command",[16][13]: 13  indicating to the first officer to engage the autopilot. This command was not read back by the first officer indicating that he had not acknowledged the command and neither was there audio confirmation in the cockpit indicating that the autopilot had been engaged. In the 55 seconds that followed, the aircraft was being piloted by neither pilot nor the autopilot. This led to it gradually increasing its banking angle from less than 1°, at the time the captain let go of the control wheel, to 34° when the bank angle warning came on. The captain may have panicked at the sound of the banking angle warning, as he made a series of movements on the control wheel which only aggravated the situation. He moved the control wheel first left, then 40° right, then 11° to the left. With the plane banking at 50°, a belated attempt was made to engage the autopilot. The captain then tried to bring the plane under control by using the right rudder, causing it to bank further to the right.[17] The first officer gave the control wheel near opposite commands to what the captain had done.[13]: 48  The captain, on noticing this, engaged the autopilot, but by then the plane was banked at nearly 115° to the right at 2,290 ft (700 m) altitude and was in an unrecoverable situation. It crashed into a mangrove swamp less than two minutes after takeoff.[13]: 12–15 

There were no communications between the aircraft and the ground after take-off.[13][18] Kenya Airways set up a crisis management center at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.[18][19]

The wreckage was discovered on 6 May in a swamp, some 20 kilometres (12 mi) southeast of Douala, submerged under mud and water.[20][21] There were no survivors.[22][13]: 15  Furthermore, Kenya Airways Group managing director Titus Naikuni said in Nairobi that local people had led rescuers to the crash site.[15] Cameroon's Minister of State for Territorial Administration Hamidou Yaya Marafa told a news conference that day, "All I can say for now is that the wreckage of the plane has been located in the small village of Mbanga Pongo, in the Douala III subdivision. We are putting in place rescue measures."[23] Kenya Airways reported that 29 bodies had been recovered from the crash site, while reports from Cameroon claimed that over 40 had been recovered. Workers reported that the bodies were "badly disfigured" and that identification would be difficult. Heavy rains in the area continued to hamper all efforts.[24]

Aircraft

The aircraft involved in the accident, registration 5Y-KYA (serial number 35069), was a Boeing 737-8AL that was equipped with twin CFMI CFM56-7B26 powerplants.[13]: 21  The airframe first flew on 9 October 2006, and was delivered to Kenya Airways on 27 October.[25] The aircraft was six months old at the time of the accident.[26][18] It was one of three Boeing 737–800s Kenya Airways had recently acquired from Singapore Aircraft Leasing Enterprise.[4][27]

Passengers and crew

Kenya Airways disclosed a passenger list indicating that the 105 passengers on board were citizens of 26 countries; thirty-seven were from Cameroon;[28] nine of the occupants were Kenyan.[15][29] Seventeen passengers boarded in Abidjan, while the rest did so in Douala.[4][29]

The six flight crew members were all Kenyan. An accompanying engineer and a deadheading flight attendant were among the passengers.[13][30]

Captain Francis Mbatia Wamwea (aged 52)—who had logged 8,500 hours on jetliners—and first officer Andrew Wanyoike Kiuru (aged 23) had joined the airline 20 years and one year, respectively, before the accident.[13][9][31][32][33]

Among the passengers on board was Anthony Mitchell, an Associated Press reporter based in Kenya.[34]

Nationality[13]: 15–16 PassengersCrewTotal
Burkina Faso101
Cameroon37037
Central African Republic202
China505
Comoros202
Democratic Republic of the Congo202
Republic of the Congo101
Ivory Coast606
Egypt101
Equatorial Guinea202
Ghana101
India15015
Kenya369
South Korea101
Mali101
Mauritius101
Niger303
Nigeria606
Senegal101
South Africa707
Sweden101
Switzerland101
Tanzania101
Togo101
United Kingdom505
United States101
Total1086114

Investigation

The Cameroonian government established a technical commission of inquiry to investigate the accident.[13] The National Transportation Safety Board of the United States sent a "Go-team" to assist with the investigation.[35]

Early attention as to the cause of the crash centred on the possibility of dual engine flameout during heavy weather. Several clues pointed in this direction, including the time the plane was in the air, the distress call issued by the aircraft (both later disputed), the meteorological conditions at the time of the crash, and the nose-down position of the wreckage. The investigators theorised that this would be consistent with the plane losing power in both engines, attempting to glide back to the airport, and stalling during the attempt.[36][37]

The flight data recorder (FDR) was recovered on 7 May,[13]: 30 [38] and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) on 15 June.[13]: 30 [39][40] Both were sent to the Transportation Safety Board in Canada where they were read out.[13]: 30 [41][42][43]

The Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority (CCAA) released its final report on the crash on 28 April 2010.[8] The investigation found that the aircraft departed without receiving clearance from air traffic control. The captain, who was the flying pilot, corrected a right bank several times after takeoff. After 42 seconds of flight, the captain indicated that he had activated the autopilot. The autopilot did not engage, nor was the message acknowledged by the copilot. The pilots did not notice that the aircraft was increasingly banking to the right, from 11° when the captain indicated that he had set the autopilot, to 34° when a bank angle warning sounded 40 seconds later. The captain then activated the autopilot, but his inputs on the controls led to a further increase in the bank angle. The aircraft pitched nose down after it reached a height of 2,900 feet (880 m) with a 115° right bank. The two pilots used opposite and conflicting control inputs to attempt to recover the aircraft. The aircraft crashed at 287 knots (532 km/h; 330 mph), at 48° down pitch and 60° right bank.[13]

The CCAA determined the probable causes of the crash to be "loss of control of the aircraft as a result of spatial disorientation (non recognized or subtle type transitioning to recognized spatial disorientation) after a long slow roll, during which no instrument scanning was done, and in the absence of external visual references in a dark night. Inadequate operational control, lack of crew coordination, coupled with the non-adherence to procedures of flight monitoring, confusion in the utilization of the autopilot, have also contributed to cause this situation."[13]

The accident is featured in the ninth episode of Season 20 of Mayday, also known as Air Crash Investigation. The episode is titled "Stormy Cockpit".[44]

References

  1. ↑ Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved on 15 June 2011.
  2. ↑ Learmount, David (7 January 2008). "Accidents/incidents for 2007 – Fatal accidents: scheduled passenger flights". Flight International. Flightglobal. Archived from the original on 19 February 2014. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  3. ↑ McCrummen, Stephanie (6 May 2007). "Passenger Jet Disappears Over Cameroon". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 20 January 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Kaminski-Morrow, David (15 May 2007). "Investigators trawl swamps for clues on Kenya 737 crash". Flight International. London: Flightglobal. Archived from the original on 16 June 2014.
  5. ↑ Vogt, Heidi (8 May 2007). "Grim Work Continues at Plane Crash Site". The Washington Post. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 26 October 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  6. ↑ "Aucun survivant dans le crash de l'appareil de Kenya Airways" [No survivors after the crash of a Kenya Airways plane]. Le Monde (in French). 7 May 2007. Archived from the original on 4 August 2012.
  7. ↑ "No chance of survivors from Kenya plane – Cameroon". Reuters AlertNet. 7 May 2007. Archived from the original on 9 May 2007. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
  8. 1 2 Kaminiski-Morrow, David (28 April 2010). "Kenya 737 crash: Poor airmanship led to disorientation". London: Flightglobal. Archived from the original on 17 June 2014. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  9. 1 2 3 "Reconstructing Flight 507's final moments". IOL. 11 May 2007. Archived from the original on 5 October 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2012.
  10. ↑ "Reconstructing the last moments of Kenya Airways Flight 507". The Star. 12 May 2007. Archived from the original on 14 April 2014.
  11. ↑ "Official: Cameroon crash probe turns to pilot". USA Today. Associated Press. 10 May 2007. Archived from the original on 7 April 2014.
  12. 1 2 Kamisnki-Morrow, David (27 June 2007). "No evidence of mechanical failure on crashed Kenya Airways Boeing 737". London: Flighgtglobal. Archived from the original on 20 January 2016. Retrieved 28 September 2012.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 "Technical Investigation into the Accident of the B737-800 Registration 5Y-KYA Operated by Kenya Airways that Occurred the 5th of May 2007 in Douala" (PDF). Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority. 28 April 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015.
  14. ↑ "Kenya Air Jet Goes Down in Cameroon". The New York Times. Associated Press. 6 May 2007. Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  15. 1 2 3 "'No survivors' in Cameroon crash". BBC News. 7 May 2007. Archived from the original on 7 April 2012. Retrieved 2 May 2012.
  16. ↑ "What Really Happened on KQ Flight 507? – Owaahh". Owaahh. 27 April 2017. Archived from the original on 31 October 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  17. ↑ Jotischky, Tim (18 March 2012). "The tragedy of Flight KQ507". The Daily Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 18 November 2012. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
  18. 1 2 3 Kaminski-Morrow, David (5 May 2007). "Kenya Airways Boeing 737 crashes in Cameroon". London: Flightglobal. Archived from the original on 17 June 2014.
  19. ↑ "Kenya plane 'crashes in Cameroon'". BBC News. 5 May 2007. Archived from the original on 10 November 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  20. ↑ "Cameroon finds Kenya plane, no word of survivors". Reuters. 6 May 2007. Archived from the original on 12 November 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  21. ↑ Thomas, Geoffrey; Straus, Brian (8 May 2007). "Recovery operation beginning outside Douala for lost KQ 737". Air Transport World. Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
  22. ↑ "UPDATE 5-Cameroon finds Kenya plane, no word of survivors". Reuters. 6 May 2007.
  23. ↑ "No survivors from Kenya plane: Cameroon". Brisbane Times. 7 May 2007. Archived from the original on 22 July 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  24. ↑ "Flight KQ 507:29 bodies recovered". KBC. 8 May 2007. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 8 May 2007.
  25. ↑ "Boeing 737 Next Gen – MSN 35069 – 5Y-KYA". Airfleets.net. Archived from the original on 4 March 2013. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
  26. ↑ "Kenya Airways Boeing 737 black box found". London: Flightglobal. 8 May 2007. Archived from the original on 16 June 2014.
  27. ↑ "Plane was one of KQ's newly acquired crafts". Sunday Times. 5 May 2007. Archived from the original on 9 May 2007. Retrieved 5 May 2007.
  28. ↑ "6 Nigerians, 108 others feared killed in plane crash". The Punch. 6 May 2007. Archived from the original on 15 July 2011. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  29. 1 2 "Full list of Passengers of Flight KQ 507" (Press release). Kenya Airways. Archived from the original on 16 May 2007. Retrieved 18 January 2013.
  30. ↑ Official Report (English) Archived 23 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine/Official Report (French) Archived 23 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine (28 April 2010) – Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority. 15-16/58 (English: 15-16/89, French: 15-16/59). Retrieved 11 May 2011.
  31. ↑ Jotischky, Tim (18 March 2012). "The tragedy of Flight KQ507". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 18 November 2012.
  32. ↑ http://www.caa.co.za/Foreign%20Accidents%20and%20Incidents%20Reports/Cameroon%20Accident.pdf Archived 20 January 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  33. ↑ "Tragedy of KQ 507". Daily Nation. Archived from the original on 23 April 2019. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  34. ↑ Rice, Xan (7 May 2007). "Missing Britons named as plane's wreckage is found in Cameroon jungle". The Guardian. Nairobi. Archived from the original on 1 November 2010. Retrieved 28 September 2012.
  35. ↑ "NTSB sending team to assist in the investigation of a 737 crash in Cameroon" (Press release). National Transportation Safety Board. 5 May 2007. Archived from the original on 1 March 2013. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  36. ↑ "Engine failure probed in Kenyan crash". USA Today. Associated Press. 29 October 2007. Archived from the original on 22 March 2016. Retrieved 27 May 2015.
  37. ↑ "Rescuers recover human remains at Cameroon crash site". Taipei Times. 9 May 2007. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2012.
  38. ↑ "Other News – 05/08/2007". Air Transport World. 9 May 2007. Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
  39. ↑ "KQ Resumes Cameroon Flights". 15 May 2007. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 15 May 2007.
  40. ↑ "Kenyan flight KQ 507 – Cockpit voice recorder recovered". 18 June 2007. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 18 June 2007.
  41. ↑ Kaminski-Morrow, David (5 June 2007). "Canadian investigators to analyse crashed 737 data". London: Flightglobal. Archived from the original on 17 June 2014.
  42. ↑ "Kenya: Govt Wants 'Black Box' Analysed in Canada". AllAfrica.com. The East African Standard. 8 May 2007. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2012.
  43. ↑ "Analysis of KQ 507's flight Flight Data Recorder complete". 30 May 2007. Retrieved 30 May 2007.
  44. ↑ Kenya Airways Flight 507 at IMDb
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