RUNDU – Last Friday’s crash of the Embraer 190 jet in Bwabwata National Park is the second worst in terms of the number of fatalities in the lifespan of the Embraer E-jet family since it entered production in 2002, says Aviation Safety Network (ASN).
The worst accident was recorded on August 24 2010 when an Embraer 190 operated by Henan Airlines was destroyed in an accident while on approach to Yichun Lindu Airport, China where 44 of the 96 people on board were killed, statistics from ASN indicate.
Like in the case of the Bwabwata crash, the Henan Airlines operated plane was also destroyed by fire.
Before last week’s crash, the last air crash involving an Embraer 190 jet was on August 17 2012 in Taiwan when a Mandarin Airlines Embraer 190 sustained substantial damage in a runway accident at Magong, Taiwan but fortunately all 110 people on board survived.
The Embraer E-jet range is produced by Brazilian Aerospace conglomerate Embraer.
The Embraer 190 that crashed in Namibia was en route from Mozambique to Angola.
It went down in the forest terrain of the Bwabwata National Park, where Namibia turns into a narrow strip of land sandwiched between Botswana and Angola.
The 33 deceased included 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, one French national, one Brazilian and one Chinese.
LAM flight TM470 took off from Maputo at 09h26 GMT last Friday and had been due to land in Luanda at 13h10 GMT, but never arrived.
The burned wreckage was only discovered on Saturday morning, as the rain and forest terrain made it practically impossible for search teams to locate the wreckage on Friday when they were alerted about the missing plane.
Investigators still on the crash site
Meanwhile, a team of accident investigation experts is still in the Kavango Region to investigate the cause of the crash, while in Windhoek, international forensic and genetic experts are assisting the Namibian forensic team with the identification of the 33 crash victims.
The Namibian police have called on family members of the accident victims to send their blood samples so that their relatives can be identified positively using forensics.
Although media reports claim that the police recovered 31 of the 33 bodies, police in the region downplayed the figures, adding that none of the bodies were intact, making it difficult to count them.
Speaking to New Era yesterday, Regional Crime Investigations Coordinator, Deputy Commissioner Willie Bampton, said the Namibian Police couldn’t exactly say how many bodies were recovered from the wreckage.
“We can under no circumstances say how many bodies were recovered because it was just body parts all over, one could not tell how many bodies there were. But I can say that we collected all the body parts we could,” he said.
Bampton said although the wreckage must be removed from the national park, directives are to come from the airline operator “since it is their plane”.
By Mathias Haufiku