Aviacol - Foros de Aviación

Un Boeing 737 de ETHIOPIAN Airlines se estrelló en el Mar Mediterráneo, el vuelo ET409 despegó de Beirut a las 2:10am hora local con destino a la capital de Etiopía, Addis Abeba.

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cuando fue esto??

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BEIRUT – An Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 90 people caught fire and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off from Beirut early Monday, setting off a frantic search as passenger seats, baby sandals and other debris washed ashore.

At least 34 bodies were recovered, but no survivors were found by nightfall.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Lebanon has seen stormy weather since Sunday night, with crackling thunder, lightning and rain.

"We saw fire falling down from the sky into the sea," said Khaled Naser, a gas station attendant who saw the plane go down around 2:30 a.m., crashing into the frigid waters of the Mediterranean that had reached just 64 degrees (18 degrees Celsius) by Monday afternoon.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said terrorism was not suspected in the crash of Flight 409, which was headed for the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

"Sabotage is ruled out as of now," he said.

Weeping relatives streamed into Beirut's airport to wait for news on their loved ones. One woman dropped to her knees in tears; another cried out, "Where is my son?"

Andree Qusayfi said his 35-year-old brother, Ziad, was traveling to Ethiopia for his job at a computer company, but was planning to return to Lebanon for good soon.

"We begged him to postpone his flight because of the storm," Qusayfi said, his eyes red from crying. "But he insisted on going because he had work appointments."

Zeinab Seklawi said her 24-year-old son Yasser called her as he was boarding.

"I told him, 'God be with you,' and I went to sleep," Seklawi said. "Please find my son. I know he's alive and wouldn't leave me."

The dead include several children, according to a Lebanese defense official who asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak publicly.

The Boeing 737-800 took off around 2:30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. EST) and went down 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) off the coast, said Ghazi Aridi, the public works and transportation minister.

"The weather undoubtedly was very bad," Aridi told reporters at the airport.

The Lebanese army said in a statement the plane was on fire shortly after takeoff.

Pieces of the plane and debris were washing ashore in the hours after the crash, including passenger seats, a baby sandal, a fire extinguisher, suitcases and bottles of medicine.

The wife of Denis Pietton, the French ambassador to Lebanon, was on the plane, according to the French embassy.

Helicopters and naval ships were scrambled for a rescue effort as waves reaching 1.5 feet (a half-meter) slammed into the shore. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced a day of mourning and closed schools and government offices.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the U.S. military has deployed a guided-missile destroyer, the USS-Ramage, as well as a P-3 surveillance aircraft to help with search and rescue efforts.

At the Rafik Hariri Government Hospital, Red Cross workers brought in bodies on stretchers covered by wool blankets as relatives wailed and comforted each other outside.

A statement from the defense ministry in Cyprus, which sent reinforcements to help in the search, said 34 bodies have been recovered so far.

Ethiopian Airlines' CEO Girma Wake told journalists in Addis Ababa that he had no information on the fate of those on board or about the cause of the crash. He said the aircraft had been serviced on Dec. 25 and passed inspection.

He also said the plane had been leased in September from New York-based CIT Aerospace. CIT spokesman declined to comment and referred questions to Ethiopian Airlines.

The plane was carrying 83 passengers and 7 crew, Lebanese officials said. Aridi, the transportation minister, identified the passengers as 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopians, one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Canadian of Lebanese origin, one Russian of Lebanese origin, a French woman and two Britons of Lebanese origin.

Ethiopian Airlines reported that there were 82 passengers and eight crew; the discrepancy could not immediately be explained.

The Boeing 737 is considered one of the safest planes in airline service. The jet was first introduced in the 1960s, and today is the workhorse on many short- and medium-range routes.

Still, over the past 15 years it was involved in a series of incidents and crashes linked to problems with a valve in the rudder assembly. The valve reportedly would malfunction and cause the rudder to turn independently of the pilot's commands.

The problem was considered resolved after operators of older Boeing 737s were ordered to carry out inspections and upgrades of the critical rudder control systems.

Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight safety at the School of Aviation at Lund University in Sweden, said the rudder problem has been corrected by the manufacturer and that he'd be "hugely surprised" if it had anything to do with the crash.

Dekker, himself a 737 pilot, said that if reports of an engine fire proved to be correct, the accident could have resulted from a loss of control at a relatively low altitude where it would have been difficult to recover.

He noted that the 737's engines were overpowered in order to fulfill performance requirements in the event of the loss of an engine at takeoff. This tended to produce a turning movement of the entire aircraft — known as yaw — toward the dead engine.

Poor visibility in low clouds combined with high winds may have contributed to the problem faced by the pilots trying to regain control, he said.

Aviation safety analyst Chris Yates said it was far too early to say what caused the crash, but he noted that modern aircraft are built to withstand all but the foulest weather conditions.

"One wouldn't have thought that a nasty squall in and of itself would be the prime cause of an accident like this," said Yates, an analyst based in Manchester, England. He said reports of fire could suggest "some cataclysmic failure of one of the engines" or that something had been sucked into the engine, such as a bird or debris.

The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines has long had a reputation for high-quality service compared to other African airlines, with two notable crashes in more than 20 years.

A hijacked Ethiopian Airlines jet crash-landed off the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel in November 1996, killing 126 of the 175 people aboard. In September 1988, an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed shortly after taking off when it ran into a flock of birds, killing 31 of the 104 people on board.

Ethiopian Airlines announced last week that it signed an agreement with Boeing to buy 10 more of the 737-800s at an estimated $767 million. The order will expand the airline's fleet from the 36 aircraft it has now — not including the 737-800 that crashed Monday.

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Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus and Samson Haileyesus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.
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En español.


Viajaban 90 personas
Recuperan nueve cuerpos del avión siniestrado
Lunes, 25 de Enero 2010
Europa Press
Los equipos de rescate han recuperado ya los cuerpos de nueve de las 90 personas que viajaban a bordo del avión de la aerolínea Ethiopian Airlines que se precipitó al mar Mediterráneo este lunes en medio de malas condiciones meteorológicas poco después de despegar del aeropuerto de Beirut y están buscando a posibles supervivientes.



El avión, un Boeing 737-800 con destino a Addis Ababa, desapareció del radar unos cinco minutos después del despegue a las 2:37 horas (1:37 hora española) durante una tormenta con truenos e intensa lluvia. El presidente libanés, Michel Suleiman, consideró "improbable" que haya podido tratarse de un sabotaje pero aseguró que "la investigación determinará la causa".

Por su parte, el presidente de Ethiopian Airlines, Girma Wake, indicó desde Addis Abeba que no tiene información de posibles supervivientes. "He contactado con las autoridades libanesas, que no han confirmado aún ningún superviviente", afirmó. Preguntado sobre si podría tratarse de un acto terrorista, dijo no tener "ninguna información en esa línea" por el momento.

A bordo del avión viajaban 83 pasajeros y siete tripulantes, según informó el ministro de Transporte libanés, Ghazi al Aridi, a la prensa en el aeropuerto, donde familiares de los pasajeros se han congregado ya a la espera de noticias de eventuales supervivientes. "El lugar (del accidente) ha sido identificado a 3,5 kilómetros al oeste de la localidad de Na'ameh", en la costa, precisó.

Se tiene constancia de que 54 de los pasajeros eran libaneses, mientras que 22 eran etíopes, dos británicos y se sabe que también había canadienses, rusos, franceses, iraquíes y sirios. Según informó la Embajada francesa, Marla Pietton, mujer del embajador francés en Beirut, Denis Pietton, iba en el aparato.

Patrulleras y helicópteros del Ejército libanés están buscando ya en una pequeña zona frente a Na'ameh, 10 kilómetros al sur de Beirut. El portavoz de la Fuerza Interina de la ONU en Líbano (FINUL), colonel Diego Fulco, informó de que dos barcos se encuentran en el lugar del siniestro y un tercero está en camino. Además, hay dos helicópteros de la ONU, añadió.

Además, un helicóptero de la Policía chipriota y otro del Ejército británico estacionado en Chipre también están participando en la búsqueda. Según una fuente, los residentes en la costa pudieron ver "una bola de fuego" estrellándose cerca de Na'ameh.

La aerolínea estatal Ethiopian Airlines se ha posicionado como un importante actor en el tráfico aéreo internacional en Africa y recientemente ha ampliado su red asiática. La compañía cuenta con vuelos regulares a Líbano. El viernes pasado había anunciado una orden de compra de diez Boeing de próxima generación 737-800 por un total de 767 millones de dólares.

El último gran incidente en que se vio implicado un avión de Ethiopian Airlines se produjo en noviembre de 1996 cuando 125 de los 175 pasajeros y tripulantes murieron después de que el aparato secuestrado se estrellara en el mar cerca de las islas Comoras.

Fuente: http://www.dclm.es/news/174/ARTICLE/532 ... 01-25.html

El avión un B737-8AS, matrícula ET-ANB tenía poco más de cuatro meses con Ethiopian Airlines. El avión hizo su primer vuelo el 18 de enero de 2002, fue entregado nuevo a Ryanair como EI-CSW el 4 de febrero de 2002, el 13 de septiembre de 2009 llegó a Addis Abeba para Ethiopian Airlines.

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Mas Info:
El piloto de Ethiopian no siguió los consejos de la torre de control

El B-737 realizó un giro inesperado antes de desaparecer del radar y estrellarse
Beirut, 27 Ene 2010 Extracrew (Agencias)

Autoridades del Líbano han asegurado que el vuelo de Ethiopian Airlines que se estrelló el pasado lunes 25 de enero frente a las costas de Beirut no voló en la dirección recomendada por la torre de control del aeropuerto de la capital libanesa para evitar el mal tiempo.

El ministro de Transporte, Ghazi Aridi, ha explicado que al piloto se le pidió que corrigiera la dirección, pero que éste realizó un "giro muy rápido y extraño antes de desaparecer completamente del radar". Aridi ha añadido que no estaba claro por qué ocurrió eso ni si había sido algo que escapaba al control del piloto.

El Boeing 737 desapareció del radar cinco minutos después del despegue, que se desarrolló en mitad de una tormenta.

El avión llevaba a bordo 90 personas, entre pasajeros y tripulación, y se presume que todas están muertas. Sin embargo, la operación de búsqueda de supervivientes continúa y se calcula que 24 cuerpos ya han sido recuperados en el mar Mediterráneo.

En las labores de búsqueda participan una flota estadounidense, el Ejército Libanés y la Fuerza Interina de la ONU en el Líbano (FINUL).

Halladas las cajas negras del B737 de Ethiopian siniestrado

Los objetos se encontraban a 1.300 metros de profundidad
Beirut, 28 Ene 2010 Extracrew (Agencias)

Un buque de Estados Unidos ha localizado las cajas negras del avión de Ethiopian Airlines que se estrelló en el mar Mediterráneo, frente a las costas libanesas, el pasado lunes 25 de enero, con 90 personas a bordo.

Los objetos fueron hallados a 1.300 metros de profundidad y a apenas ocho kilómetros de distancia del aeropuerto de Beirut, desde donde había despegado el B737 siniestrado cinco minutos antes. Los equipos de búsqueda analizan ahora la mejor forma de recuperar las grabaciones.

No se ha podido confirmar si el buque norteamericano también ha encontrado el fuselaje del aparato, aunque "teóricamente las cajas negras deberían estar dentro".

Equipos libaneses e internacionales, entre ellos efectivos de la Unión Europea y Naciones Unidas, llevan días rastreando un área distanciada 10 kilómetros de la costa y con 20 kilómetros de largo. Intentan localizar restos de la aeronave y más víctimas, aunque hasta el momento sólo se han recuperado 14 cadáveres.

Weather reported about the time of the accident (00:35 UTC) was:
OLBA 250000Z 31008KT 280V340 8000 VCTS FEW020CB SCT026 13/06 Q1014 NOSIG= [00:00 UTC; wind 310 degrees at 8 knots, variable from 280° to 340°; visibility 8km; thunderstorms in the vicinity; few clouds with cumulonimbus at 2,000 ft; scattered clouds at 2,600 ft; temperature 13 degrees C, dew point 6 degrees C, pressure 1014 hPa]
OLBA 250100Z VRB03KT 4000 SHRA FEW020CB BKN026 12/07 Q1014 NOSIG=

Saludos.