Kenya Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni says the aircraft lost touch with the control tower in Doula immediately after take off.
"The latest information that we have is that a distress signal was picked up on the west coast of Africa and a search and rescue mission, initiated by the Cameroonian authorities, was initiated at 1105 this morning, that is Nairobi time," he said. "So far no report has yet been received from this mission."
Naikuni says there were 105 passengers and nine crew members on board the plane. He says most of the passengers were African, but there were also Europeans, Asians and one American on the flight.
"The government has co-ordinated a team of officials and experts led by the Honorable Minister of Transport Chirau Ali Mwakwere to travel to Cameroon and link up with authorities there so as to establish what is happening and also lead the operation," he said. "The government will do everything to unearth the cause of this accident in order to prevent it from occurring again."
An air and ground search is taking place in the west African country of Cameroon for a plane that's believed to have crashed in dense forest.It's said to be carrying 114 passengers and crew.The plane belongs to Kenya Airways.
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Australia Broadcasting Corp
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Kenya Airways plane crashes in Cameroon, search on
Tansa Musa, Reuters
A Kenya Airways passenger plane with 114 people on board crashed in a densely forested area of southern Cameroon on Saturday shortly after takeoff, government and aviation officials said.
Military and civil aviation helicopters were scouring a wide zone in the central African country between Kribi on the Atlantic coast and Ngomedzap, south of the capital Yaounde.
"The search is underway but the accident site has not yet been found," the Transport Ministry said in a statement
State radio earlier reported the plane crashed near Niete, north of the border with Equatorial Guinea, after taking off from Cameroons second city of Douala.
"We were not able to locate any wreckage at Niete where first information suggested the crash may have occurred," a local government official in southern Cameroon told Reuters.
He said the search had shifted to another area southwest of the capital between the towns of Lolodorf and Ebolowa where inhabitants said they had heard a loud explosion.
In Nairobi, Kenya Airways Group Managing Director Titus Naikuni said authorities in Cameroon had picked up an automatic distress signal from the area where the plane went missing.
"The distress call came from a machine, not a pilot," he said.
Kenya Airways said the 737-800 airliner, which began its journey in Ivory Coasts main city Abidjan and stopped over in Cameroon, was carrying 105 passengers and nine crew.
The airline said there were 34 Cameroonians, 15 Indians, seven South Africans, six Chinese, five Britons and one American among the passengers, the bulk of whom were from African countries. The nine crew were all Kenyans.
The company said the Douala control tower had received the last message from the aircraft right after takeoff. The plane had been due to land in Nairobi at 6:15 a.m.
Kenyan Transport Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere said the U.S. government was assisting in the search with satellite images taken over the expected flight path.
Kenya Airways, one of Africas few profitable carriers, set up a crisis centre to monitor events and a passenger information centre at a hotel in Nairobi.
The carrier generally has a good safety record on a continent where air accidents are above the world average.
The plane was six months old and had no history of problems, Naikuni said. Kenyan media reported there was rain in Douala when the plane took off.
On Jan. 30, 2000, a Kenya Airways Airbus A-310 crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff from Abidjan, killing 169 of the 179 passengers and crew.
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Montreal Gazette
Montreal Quebec, Canada
Published: Saturday, May 05, 2007
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