Mozambique Airlines plane crash kills all on board

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Mozambique Airlines plane crash kills all on board

Plane carrying 33 people crashes in remote Namibian national park near border with Angola

Associated Press
The Guardian, Saturday 30 November 2013 15.10 GMT

Maputo, Mozambique, where the plane took off from en route for Luanda, Angola. Photograph: Carlos Litulo for the Guardian

A Mozambique Airlines plane carrying 33 people has crashed in a remote border area, killing everyone on board.

The plane crashed in a Namibian national park near the border with Angola and there were no survivors, Namibia's deputy police commissioner, Bollen Sankwasa, said.

The plane was carrying 27 passengers, including 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, and one citizen each from France, Brazil and China, the airline said. Six crew members were on board.

Flight TM470 from Maputo, the Mozambican capital, did not land as scheduled in Luanda, the Angolan capital, on Friday afternoon, and the airline initially said the plane may have landed in Rundu, northern Namibia. It said it co-ordinated with aviation authorities in Namibia, Botswana and Angola to try to find the missing plane.

A Namibian police helicopter and officers on the ground joined in the search. The area is vast and there are no roads, making it difficult to locate the plane, a police official, Willy Bampton, said.

The search was conducted in the Bwabwata national park in north-eastern Namibia. Several thousand people, as well as elephants, buffalo and other wildlife live in the park, which covers 2,360 sq miles.

Airlines from Mozambique are among carriers banned in the European Union because of safety concerns.

Tony Tyler, the director general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, said earlier this week that none of the 25 African members of the association, which include Mozambique Airlines, had an accident in 2012.

"But the overall safety record for Africa remains a problem that we must fix," he said at a meeting of the African Airlines Association in Kenya. He said African aviation comprises about 3% of global airline traffic, and last year it accounted for nearly half of the fatalities on western-built jets.

Mozambique Airlines uses Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer aircraft.

In a statement on the airline's website, the chief executive, Marlene Mendes Manave, said that the airline grew 8% in the first half of this year, compared with the same period in 2012.