No details on what has happened so far, but the BBC is reporting that Afriqiyah Airways 771 crashed near Tripoli Int’l Airport (HLLT) this morning. All 105 passengers and crew did not survive.
A commercial passenger plane has crashed in Libya, killing all 105 people on board, airport officials say.
The Afriqiyah Airways flight from Johannesburg had been due to land at 0610 local (0410 GMT), they said. The plane crashed close to the airport.
The 94 passengers on board the Airbus 330 are believed to be of various nationalities, including British and South African.
The 11 crew were all thought to be Libyan nationals, an employee said.
The plane had been due to go on to Heathrow airport after stopping in Tripoli.
The BBC’s Rana Jawad in Tripoli says it was not clear whether the plane was on the runway when it crashed, but she says that people she spoke to at the airport said they could not see the plane.
Ambulances have been going back and forth to the airport, our correspondent says.
She adds that the weather has been sunny and clear over the past few days.
Once again, not much detail has come through the newswire, so it’s too early to speculate on anything (read: let’s not make this another prelude to an A vs. B war).
An Afriqiyah Airways flight from Johannesburg crashed just one metre (three feet) from the runway as it was landing in Tripoli early Wednesday, an airline official said.
“Yes I can confirm the crash but not the number of the dead. We are waiting for a report from Tripoli to tell us what happened,” said Bongani Sithole, the airline’s head of reservations at Johannesburg’s international airport.
“We hear that it happened one metre away from the runway,” said Sithole.
The kid has multiple fractures in both legs, a clear indicator that it was caused by the seat collapse in front of him.
It’s a well kept secret in the industry that many crashes would be survivable if the seats were properly anchored.
When are we going to have air transport seating that can tolerate the g’s of human survival, versus the arcane notion of letting go from their anchors at 6Gs killing people, or in the least, keeping them from WALKING OUT, in an otherwise survivable crash?
Crash safety and survival is regulated in cars - why not passenger planes?
The main runway at Tripoli Airport is 3,600 yards (meters) long. According to international airport guides, it is not equipped with an Instrument Landing System.
This all-weather, precision approach system guides descending planes down to the threshold of the runway.
But it does have two other systems that many other airports use worldwide - a high frequency omnidirectional radio system that pilots use to navigate their aircraft, and a non-directional beacon that also helps guide planes into the airport.
Low to the ground, visual approach conditions, 1600 hour bird, no reported SOS, gliding distance to runway, exploded before runway -it all points to an RPG.
Better than 6G, yet my understanding is 60G is survivable. It’s gonna hurt, but you have a chance to live at up to 60G, vs having 20G~40G multiplied human meat and seat forces crushing you from behind as mode of death.
That’s interesting. In general, on our planet our bodies can’t sustain more than +9Gs and -6Gs without suffering injury. 60Gs will reduce our insides to so much jelly.
It’s all a matter of time. A momentary impact of 50 or 60G might be survivable, but a prolonged 10G will kill you. There have been several instances of racing drivers sustaining in excess of 100G momentarily during crashes without serious injuries.
Possible theory (I’m just throwing this out here as I think about it)…
One of the hourly newsbumps on NPR on Monday had talked about the closing of some European airspace thanks to the volcano in Iceland again. This time, it was southern Europe, with the potential to affect Israel and the Mediterranean. Could volcanic ash survive that long in the air to be blown down to Libya (south side of the sea)? If they were predicting that Israeli airspace would be affected, why not also Egypt and northern Africa as a whole?
Maybe it’s just me but I fail to see how any plane crash could be described as a momentary event.
Typical examples of g-force:
A ride in the Vomit Comet approximately 0 g
Standing on the Moon at its equator 0.1654 g
Standing on the Earth at sea level-standard 1 g
Saturn V moon rocket just after launch 1.14 g
Bugatti Veyron from 0 to 100 km/h in 2.4s 1.18 g
Space Shuttle, maximum during launch and reentry 3 g
High-g roller coasters 3.5-6.3 g
Top Fuel drag racing world record of 4.4s over 1/4 mile 4.2 g
Formula One car, maximum under heavy braking 5 g
Luge, maximum expected at the Whistler Sliding Center 5.2 g
Standard, full aerobatics certified glider +7/-5 g
Apollo 16 on reentry 7.19 g
Typical max. turn in an aerobatic plane or fighter jet 9-12 g
Maximum for human on a rocket sled 46.2 g Death or serious injury likely >50 g
Sprint missile 100 g Brief human exposure survived in crash >100 g
Shock capability of mechanical wrist watches >5000 g
Rating of electronics built into military artillery shells 15,500 g
Parabellum handgun bullet 31,000 g
Horizontal axis g-force:
The human body is better at surviving g-forces that are perpendicular to the spine. In general when the acceleration is forwards, so that the g-force pushes the body backwards (colloquially known as “eyeballs in”) a much higher tolerance is shown than when the acceleration is backwards, and the g-force is pushing the body forwards (“eyeballs out”) since blood vessels in the retina appear more sensitive in the latter direction…
Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate 17 g eyeballs-in (compared to 12 g eyeballs-out) for several minutes without loss of consciousness or apparent long-term harm. The record for peak experimental horizontal g-force tolerance is held by acceleration pioneer John Stapp, in a series of rocket sled deceleration experiments culminating in a late 1954 test in which he was stopped in a little over a second from a land speed of Mach 0.9. He survived a peak “eyeballs-out” force of 46.2 times the force of gravity, and more than 25 g for 1.1 sec, proving that the human body is capable of this. Stapp lived another 45 years to age 89, but suffered lifelong damage to his vision from this last test.
Back on the crash topic, one only has to look at physics to see why the child survived.
F=ma… Force = Mass x Acceleration.
Acceleration is measured in meters per second squared (m/s^2). 9.8m/s^2 = 1g. No matter what the G forces. The mass of the child being significantly less than everyone else on board was the key to his survival.
BTW Some More news…
The Plane Crashed 400m from the nearest public road on Airport Property. The plane landed “Parallel” to the intended runway…
The debris range on this video seems to be very long and strewn out… with the tail still in tact but sheard off at the base, with both horizontal stabiliers gone. I dont know if this had shifted or not but the rudder is stuck full right. Indicating a hard/violent movement of the control surfaces before crashing.
It also adds that “According to a Libyan newspaper, the pilot of the Airbus A330-200 told air traffic controllers that they were experiencing problems shortly before the crash”.
