Crash of Hewa Bora plane with 112 pax/6crew at Kisangani

[tolipanebas]

Indeed, Hewa Bora's AOC seems to have been revoked, possibly because of gross administrative irregularities by the infamous domestic airline, discovered in the wake of their second deadly accident in just a couple of years:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/afr ... story.html

http://radiookapi.net/actualite/2011/07 ... sequences/

Meanwhile, HBA seems to have just closed shop and simply refers its pax with prepaid tickets to the government for a refund!

http://radiookapi.net/en-bref/2011/07/1 ... s-billets/

[Passenger]

I don't think Stavros Papaioannou will give up. His company has survived crashes before, his company has survived the appearance on the EU-blacklist, his company has survived the forced cancellation of their lucrative FIH-BRU-route.

Also, Papaionnou has just thanked mrs Kabila (wife of the president) for her condolences:
http://www.hba.cd/contenu/sites/HewaBor ... il0011.pdf

[jan_olieslagers]

Interesting to see the poll at the radio okapi website:

Après le crash d’un avion de Hewa Bora à Kisangani et le retrait de sa licence d’exploitation, il faudrait, selon vous:
* relancer la compagnie nationale (les Lignes aériennes congolaises) (40%, 286 Votes)
* ouvrir l’offre intérieure à des compagnies étrangères (35%, 253 Votes)
* accorder des facilités d’investissement à de nouvelles compagnies congolaises crédibles (25%, 174 Votes)

Votes au total: 713

Only 35% opting for the opening of the market to foreign airlines - and surely Korongo is considered foreign.
(perhaps better add this to the Korongo thread...?)

[TCAS_climb]

The Kabila family owns HBA (at least partly), right?

Whether Stavros gives up or not has little influence on what keeps aircraft flying: money. In "normal" parts of the world where corporations have to assume their responsibilities, a fatal accident generally means the end of the airline because it costs a fortune to clear the mess and go back to normal ops (*). I don't know how he managed to survive so far, but he seems to be running out of jokers in his sleeves now.


(* example: GOL B737 vs. corporate Legacy 600, midair over Brazil. Legal costs -just the legal costs!- are well above 200M$ now.)

[OO-LRM]

In a former business live Stavros came to my office to propose me to perform "D"checks on our "OO" registred 737s'.He told me "Nous avons l'hangar,voir meme les ingenieurs capables!"and when i asked him about JAA licences he told me"Mon cher ceci est une formalitee"sic
En tous cas!

[tolipanebas]

it is well known the paperwork at HBa is a joke. planes are just given the highest weight versions without corresponding modifications or mx supervision, crew licences from Sao Tome are photoshopped back to validity, and other documents like technical logs of aircraft are falsified too. on paper HBA is pretty ok, sadly all of it is fake...

[regi]

crew licences from Sao Tome are photoshopped back to validity, and other documents like technical logs of aircraft are falsified too. on paper HBA is pretty ok, sadly all of it is fake...

Are you sure you talk about a Congolese company and not a Chinese?

[luchtzak]

[galaxy]

Hewa Bora Airways

Hahahaha................unfortunately,only the last 15 seconds is fake.

[tolipanebas]

Indeed, they should just cut the clip short by 15 seconds and load the logo up front!

[sn26567]

A very good analysis (by African people) of what really happened: http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/ART ... crash.html

Hewa Bora was not to be blamed: it is the only airline that UN staff are allowed fly in D R Congo. The blame lays on the Authorities, 5 200 people whose (in)competence is at stake. During a thunderstorm, there were only two ATCs in the Kisangani tower, a senior one whose licence had expired and a trainee !

The black boxes of the 727 have been retrieved, but guess what? They have disappeared. Only these boxes could have told the truth about the dialogue between the pilot and the ATC.

This long and interesting article (in French) tells much more about the terrible state of Congolese aviation authorities.

Poor Korongo pilots, who will have to deal with that on a daily basis, if ever they are allowed to take off !

[airazurxtror]

From that article :
RDC since 2000 : 83 crashes, 468 casualties.
Surely a WR ?

[sn26567]

From a contact at Brussels Airlines, I also got the reference of another tough article in the Congolese press:

http://www.groupelavenir.cd/spip.php?article41287

Contrarily to the above article, Hewa Bora is directly accused. The pilot did not train on a 727 simulator since 2009. The airline was insured by a company set up by Stavros Papaioannou himself and which was unable to meet its obligations due to a lack of capital. The modifications to the aircraft had not been approved by Boeing. The pilot did not pick up the envelope with the flight plan and did not prepare the flight. HBA personnel had not been paid since three months. Etc...

This article is clearly accusing Hewa Bora of many infringements.

What will come next?

[tolipanebas]

Welcome to Africa!
These are eyebrow rising stories, but fully in line with expectations of those who have flown there.
Allow me to highlight some quotes to keep in mind when discussing operations within Africa in future, and notably why it is not such a great idea to come close to the operating limits of your plane there:

Nul n’ose dire : aucun aeroport, pas même les 4 « internationaux » (Kinshasa, Kisangani, Goma, Lubumbashi), ne respecte les normes de sécurité.

Pas de balises d’approche, pas de radars primaires et secondaires, pas de radars météo, rien ne fonctionne.

À Kinshasa, Air France et Brussels Airlines ont dû installer à leurs frais un signal visuel au sol pour les approches de nuit.

La plupart des contrôleurs congolais ont été formés sur le tas et ceux qui l’ont été à l’étranger n’ont suivi aucun stage de remise à niveau depuis des lustres.

In short: in AFRICA, you need MARGIN to be able to cope with all this. If you don't, you won't survive long!
The last thing you want to see happen to you as a respectable airline is to arrive at your international destination only to find out you can't legally land there any longer because of some technical failure on the ground, with the only option open to you to divert to a nearby 'domestic' airport of even worse standards!

[andorra-airport]

'Pilot's error' caused deadly DR Congo plane crash

The crash of a Boeing 727 in which at least 70 people died in eastern DR Congo was caused by pilot's error, according to a report published Thursday and verified by the transport ministry.

The plane, owned by Hewa Bora Airways (HBA), crashed on landing in the main northeastern town of Kisangani in Orientale province on July 8. At least 70 people were killed and several dozen were injured.

"The accident and its consequences were due to human error by the pilot, captain of the aircraft, who misjudged the weather conditions although he had not only been informed of them but flown through them," said an interim report from a government commission.

Two air traffic controllers also gave the pilot "erroneous" information when the weather was too dangerous for landing, the report added.

They said that it was "raining lightly", although the Kisangani national weather office told the commission of "heavy rain accompanied by a storm, which were unfavourable conditions for a landing," it said.

The report was published in Le Soft newspaper, then taken up by several other local media.

"The decoding of the black boxes could give us other elements to undermine or confirm what has been said in the interim report," Florentin Kage, cabinet director in the ministry of transport, told AFP.

No staff at HBA could be reached to comment on the report. The airline's licence was withdrawn in mid-July by the ministry of transport, "because of an inquiry and until further notice."

Aircraft accidents are frequent in the vast DR Congo, where many planes are old and airports lack modern equipment. All of the country's airlines are on the blacklist of the European Union, which has banned them from its airspace.

http://www.rnw.nl/africa/bulletin/pilot ... lane-crash

[Passenger]

'Pilot's error' caused deadly DR Congo plane crash

The crash of a Boeing 727 in which at least 70 people died in eastern DR Congo was caused by pilot's error, according to a report published Thursday and verified by the transport ministry.

Aviation Herald already published this yesterday, but specified it was a preliminary report:

A preliminary report, still without data from the black boxes, introduced by the accident investigation commission points out:

- the flight crew misjudged weather
- the airline assigned unqualified/non-licensed crew to operate the Boeing 727-100
- tower controllers were not licensed
- tower controllers provided erroneous/false weather data
- the airport authority lacked security plans

The commission also raises doubt about the validity of the registration (9Q-COP) of the aircraft by the Civil Aviation Authority.

Source - more details:
http://avherald.com/h?article=43f62982/0000&opt=0

[tolipanebas]

- the airline assigned unqualified / non-licensed crew to operate the Boeing 727-100

- there is doubt about the validity of the registration (9Q-COP) of the aircrat.

and then some still wonder why airlines from the RDC are automatically blacklisted in the EU!!!