Thread by @Wairuma

Tragedy of KQ 507 - Stormy Cockpit!

A THREAD.

Flight KQ 507 crashed on the night of May 4, 2007, shortly after take off from Douala International Airport in Cameroon on a scheduled Abidjan–Douala–Nairobi passenger service.

The plane started its journey in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and made a stopover at Douala, en-route to Nairobi.

A manufacturing defect in the Boeing 737-800 that caused the plane to pitch to the right could easily have been corrected by a pilot familiar with the problem, but the reports says the aircraft manufacturer omitted the information in the training manual.

"Although its declared intent is not to apportion blame but to provide recommendations to prevent a recurrence of accidents in future, the report attributes the crash to the pilot, Mr Francis Wamwea Mbatia and co-pilot Andrew Kiuru Wanyoike."

The Boeing 737-800 took off from Douala Airport at 12:06.09 am and crashed 93 seconds later at 12:07.42 am after going into a nose-dive at an altitude of 2,900 feet.

Mr Mbatia, 52, was flying with 23-year-old Kiuru and is cited to have “put up a paternalistic attitude towards his First Officer during the flight". The pilot with 8,682 flying hours and 16 years’ experience compared to the co-pilot’s 831 hours and two years of work in a cockpit.

According to the report, the pilot had “a strong character, heightened ego, was authoritative and domineering on subordinates, which sometimes manifested itself as excessive confidence and a touch of arrogance.”

The co-pilot was, on the other hand, “reserved” and “appeared subdued by the strong personality of his captain.“ After take-off, he does not call out the clearly visible and important lapses of piloting, and seems to completely place his confidence in his captain”

The investigation found that the aircraft started veering to the right soon after take off, but was brought back in line by the captain. The real problem started when the captain signalled that he had switched to auto-pilot, but for unclear reasons the auto-pilot failed to engage

The result was that for nearly a minute, the pilots were not manually in control of the aircraft and yet it was not on auto-pilot. It then started rolling to the right but with neither manual nor automatic correction.

In pitch darkness, in a rainstorm and with no visual signals such as lights on the ground or a horizon, the pilots did not check instruments and had no other way of telling that the aircraft was veering off course until an alarm sounded.

But then instead of taking proper corrective action, they panicked and plunged the aircraft into a steep dive.

Kenya Airways disclosed a passenger list indicating that the 105 passengers on board were citizens of 26 different countries; thirty-seven were from Cameroon, nine of the occupants were Kenyan. The six flight crew members were all Kenyan

The accident is featured in the tenth episode of Season 20 of Mayday, also known as Air Crash Investigation. The episode is titled "Stormy Cockpit".

PHOTOS COURTESY. nation.africa/kenya/news/tra…