A Ghanaian-registered cargo jet bound for Spain crashed shortly after take-off in eastern Canada on Thursday, killing all seven crew members, police said.
Initial reports from the scene near Halifax’s main airport suggest the Boeing 747’s tail hit the runway during take-off before crashing into a wooded area near an industrial park. Pictures from the scene show an orange glow in the sky not far from a rural road.
The weather at the time was good with clear skies.
Some remains of the seven crew members have been recovered, said Constable Joe Taplin of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The crew members were all from South Africa and Zimbabwe, an airline spokesperson said.
Steve Anderson, from MK Airlines — which is based in Hartfield, East Sussex, in the south of the United Kingdom — confirmed there were seven people on board and the airline was waiting for more news from Canadian police.
A British Foreign Office spokesperson in London said: ”We think there is a possibility there might be two Britons on board. We are waiting for more news on that.”
But Anderson said the crew were from South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The aircraft, which had stopped in Halifax to refuel, was loaded with tractors, lobsters and fish, and was bound for Zaragosa, Spain.
”There was a fire at the aircraft,” Taplin said. ”Emergency crews are done there right now and they’re fighting a fire at the aircraft.”
Witness Peter Lewis was dropping off his wife at the airport and saw two explosions that resembled heat lightning.
”As we were approaching we saw what I thought was heat lighting,” he told radio station CJCH.
”That was only a quick one followed by a second one that was bigger. And then we saw a very bright orange light and I mean bright. It took up the whole sky.”
The airport is located in a remote area outside Halifax’s city limits.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is assembling a team of investigators in Ottawa, said spokesperson John Cottreau.
MK Airlines was set up in 1990 ”to provide cost-effective and reliable air-cargo capacity to the world cargo industry” and operates scheduled and non-scheduled cargo flights around the world, it says on its website.
Although its fleet of Boeing 747s and McDonnell Douglas DC-8 freighters are registered in Ghana, MK Airlines’ administrative centre is in Britain.
In November 2001, four Britons survived when an MK Airlines cargo plane crashed in Nigeria.
One member of the 13 crew was killed when the Boeing 747 came down near the airport at Port Harcourt, in the south-east of the country.
The cargo plane, chartered by Panalpina World Trans, a freight company, was flying to South America from Luxembourg. — Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP