More than 120 people were reported to have been sucked to their deaths in an extraordinary incident when the giant back door of a Russian-built transport aircraft flipped open as it flew 10 000 feet over the Democratic Republic of Congo late on Thursday.
Forty-five minutes after takeoff from the capital, Kinshasa, the plane’s door slid open, catapulting bodies and baggage from its cavernous interior, according to one of the few surviving passengers.
”I think there were about 200 people on board, soldiers and their families, women and children,” said Prudent Mukalayi, a soldier recovering at Kinshasa’s main hospital.
”I was asleep, and then I heard people screaming. When I woke up the pilot told everyone to get to the front of the plane and there were about 40 of us, but people kept dying … there were only about 20 survivors,” said Mr Mukalayi, who said he survived having wedged himself behind a packing case before falling asleep.
Others in Kinshasa spoke of only 13 survivors — nine passengers and the plane’s four Russian crew. They were all in Kinshasa’s main hospital yesterday, being treated for minor injuries and psychological trauma.
”They were traumatised and spoke of their baggage flying everywhere,” said Kabamba Mbwebwe, head of the hospital’s emergency ward.
The Ilyushin 76 cargo plane had been chartered by Congo’s government to fly police officers and family members from Kinshasa to the second city of Lubumbashi, according to airport officials in Kinshasa.
They told the Guardian that at least 129 people had perished in the disaster; the latest in a series of accidents involving a vast fleet of former Soviet military planes in Africa.
But Congo’s information minister, Kikaya Bin Karubi, said he could confirm only seven deaths late yesterday. He told reporters the ramp had burst open at 10 000 feet over the city of Mbuji-Mayi. The defence minister, Irung Awan, said he was aware of the accident, but not of any casualties.
According to another Russian pilot, the Ilyushin managed to turn back to Kinshasa despite its door having been ripped off. ”There could have been a bigger disaster, with the door open, the plane is very difficult to fly,” said the pilot, who asked not to be named.
The pilot said the plane was owned by Hermes, a Russian charter company contracted to the Congolese military, and regularly made the 2 hour flight from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi, in the country’s south-east.
The Ilyushin 76 is a four-engine aircraft first used by the Soviet Union as a military cargo plane in 1974. In the 1980s it flew numerous supply missions to Soviet bases in Afghanistan. More recently it has seen action in Chechnya.
It is now widely employed for heavy civilian transport, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
But the plane has a chequered safety record, having been involved in at least 45 accidents, resulting in around 393 deaths, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
In January, an Il-76 operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard crashed in the Sirach mountains, killing all 275 people on board. A month earlier, six crew died when an Ilyushin crashed in East Timor.
But the Russian pilot in Kinshasa said the latest accident-prone plane was only around 20 years old — middle-aged in aviation terms — and had been regularly serviced.
The pilot suggested the door had opened either after one of the passengers tinkered with its controls, or because of a computer glitch.
”A passenger could have been touching the button for special opening device; this is a very realistic option,” the pilot said. But there could also be the possibility of an electronic problem with software, he said.
The plane’s four Russian crew — recent additions to the many former Soviet aviators employed in Congo — were yesterday closeted in Kinshasa’s Grand Hotel, having been ordered by military officials not to discuss the accident. – Guardian Unlimited Â