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On May 5, 2007, Kenya Airways’ KQ Flight 507, which was scheduled for Abidjan-Douala-Nairobi passenger services saw their Boeing 737-800 Aircraft being operated by Kenya Airways crash immediately after take off from Douala International Airport in Cameroon.
The aircraft turned over after taking off, at a high-speed dive as the pilots on board struggled to bring it under control. Still not able to understand what was happening, in less than a minute, the plane came crashing into the ground, plunging into a swamp outside Douala city, killing all 114 passengers and the crew.
Of all the 114 people aboard, 27 were from Kenya, 37 from Cameroon, and 15 from India, this is according to a report from Cameron’s Civil Aviation Authority. One American was also on board. In total, all the passengers were from 26 nations.
What caused the KQ Flight 507 plane crash?
The report, from Cameroon’s Civil Aviation Authority, blamed “spatial disorientation” on the part of the pilot for the crash, saying he “reacted inappropriately in the face of the abnormal situation.”
The pilot released the controls for 55 seconds as the plane was at 1,000 feet and climbing, the report said. The plane began to bank right, but the captain “appears unaware.”
Just before a warning sounded, the captain grabbed the controls but appeared “confused” and instead of correcting to the left, he turned further right, increasing the bank and ultimately sending the plane into a spiral, the report said.
The crash occurred “after a long slow roll, during which no instrument scanning was done, and in the absence of external visual references in a dark night,” the aviation authority said.
Kenya Airways said it was not disputing the report. But “unfortunately, there was no eyewitness account, unlike in other regular accidents, where eyewitnesses can say what they saw,” said Chris Karanja, company spokesman. “The report is founded on a reconstruction based on the instruments on board and based on what the experts believe is the probability of what happened.”
The report also blamed “inadequate operational control” and “lack of crew coordination,” among other factors, for the crash. The first officer, it said, appeared cowed by the captain and did not “call out the lapses in piloting.”
However, as the plane began a spiral dive, the first officer at first told the captain to turn right, before correcting himself and saying, “Left, left, left, captain,” the report said.
“There were shortcomings in the way the crew worked as a team,” the report said. It also noted that the plane took off without authorization from air traffic control.
Read: Tragedy of KQ 507
102 seconds that separated arguments between pilots and the perishing of lives.
However, the most recent investigation revealed that differences between the two pilots led to the crash of the Kenya Airways Flight.
The documented information aired on the National Geographic channel revealed how Captain Francis Mbatia was rude and intimidating to the first Officer Andrew Kiuru before the KQ flight 507 crashed.
It is the toxic climate in the cockpit that made Andrew Kiuru stay quiet for 10 seconds; a significant time in aviation, as the plane lost control, and the captain had to fight with the controls on his own.
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It was only after the captain shouted; ‘we are crashing’ that the first officer spoke.
The 44-minute recording says that while the first officer was young, at 23, he appeared well knowledgeable in controlling the plane during the rapid descent.
The captain, however, experienced spatial disorientation – a state where one fails to differentiate between up and down or left and right – brought about by the inability to determine the altitude of the plane.
The plane, which departed Douala International Airport some minutes to midnight on May 5 just lasted about one and a half minutes in the air before descending rapidly to a mangrove swamp, 5.6 kilometers from the airport’s runway.
While the plane was expected to land at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 6.15 am, it was not until 7 am that it was discovered missing.
