A brand new Boeing 737 takes off during an intense storm in Douala Cameroon and mysteriously disappears from the sky.
The flight had 114 people on board, the flight KQ507 nose dives into a swamp less than two minutes after take off from Douala airport in Cameroon.
The flight was due to land in Nairobi at 6.30 am, a controller at the Douala airport is ending his shift before receiving a call. The call seems to be from KQ worried that their bird had disappeared.
Seems like KQ had prior information that their plane was missing due to lack of sight on radars but didn’t want to cause panic to the general public.
The investigations found that the pilot failed to notice the aircraft was banking uncontrollably and the co-pilot shouted for him to turn in the wrong direction.
Climbing in the dark during a thunderstorm, the pilot Mr. Francis became disorientated and reacted too late as the aircraft rolled to the right.
The pilot had 8000hrs in the cockpit, he had worked at KQ for 16 years while the first officer was on his 1st year learning the ropes.
The Pilots was recorded saying “We are crashing” as he struggled to regain control.
Moments later his 23-year-old first officer mistakenly told him to turn right, before shouting , “left, left, left”. The six-month-old Boeing 737-800 crashed seconds later.
There was miscommunication in the cockpit, the Pilot called on the first officer to put on the autopilot, but he never engaged the instruments.The investigators believe the first officer was so preoccupied rerouting the plane around the storm that he forgot to engage the autopilot.
The investigators also have question marks on KQ cockpit procedures on who is responsible on autopilot engagements.
The investigations also reveal that the pilot had shortcomings, that he had difficulties in training and lack of system knowledge on auto flight systems.
Early investigations had focused on bad weather and the towering thunderstorms which lashed Douala’s airport the evening of the crash.
The investigators further accused the pilot of failing to follow procedure by taking off without authorisatjon from air traffic control.
The newly qualified first officer, flying the route for only the third time, may also have been intimidated by the “authoritative and domineering”
The investigation also clain that the airplane crashed after a loss of control by the crew as a result of spatial disorientation, after a long slow roll, during which no instrument scanning was done, and in the absence of external visual references in a dark night.
