Doomed UTA Flight 141 May Have Been Stolen Angolan Boeing 727

The doomed UTA Flight 141 may have been a Boeing 727 that was stolen from Luanda airport in Angola in May, or a U.S.-registered aircraft that had undergone an exterior makeover at Beirut International Airport, where its technical worthiness had been questioned.

According to Wednesday's edition of An Nahar, neither of these theories has yet been proven, leaving officials scrambling to distance themselves from Lebanon's worst civil aviation catastrophe, even though it did not occur on its soil.

As more intrigues unfolded in the case of the Christmas Day crash of the Beirut-bound flight from Benin, the last batch of Lebanese victims were buried on Tuesday in Lebanon heart-breaking scenes across the country. They were among 77 bodies repatriated on Sunday from Benin by the French Air Force.

Only 21 people survived the Christmas Day tragedy in Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital, after a botched takeoff attempt.

Despite pressure from the Beirut government, there was still no official word on exactly how many people were on the plane – allegedly overloaded by some nine tons in humans and also exotic fruit. The unofficial list remained at 161 passengers and crewmembers.

But the owners of the plane, Union des Transports Africains - a joint Guinean-Lebanese enterprise - have yet to produce an official manifest.

The confusion has been worsened by the mysterious disappearance of the Libyan co-pilot from the hospital in Benin where he was being treated for injuries.

Parliament's Transport and Public Works Committee convened an emergency session Tuesday to address the possibility that Beirut Airport could be held liable for allowing UTA to operate its service between the African country and Lebanon.

High on the agenda is compensation for families who lost loved ones, not only dear to their hearts, but also their only source of financing.

Thousands of Lebanese expatriates in Africa provide the upkeep for relatives at home, and the Lebanese who perished on Flight 141 fall into that category.

There has been speculation that Lloyds, the London-based, worldwide insurance company that had covered the plane, might not be liable to pay any compensation for the families, since the airliner might have violated civil aviation rules.

I posted some stuff on this the day it happened, here.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) lists the airline as being "Union Transports Africains de Guinee" in Guinea. But another ICAO listing shows it being registered in Indonesia. Wierd.

However, all the news sources I've found confirm the Lebanese-Guinean ownership, nothing mentioned about Indonesia.

Aside from that, this plane and the "missing" plane had separate registrations. However it is odd (coincidental?) that the missing plane was last spotted at the Conackry airport in Guinea, which is where the crashed plane originated.

The missing plane was purchased from American Airlines by the extremely shadowy Aerospace Sales & Leasing of Florida. I can't determined who purchased this specific plane from American Airlines, and the fact that it was run by UTA doesn't actually mean that UTA owned it, it could be leased from the actual owner. It's all very ambiguous.

In any case there's no reason to believe that this is the "missing" plane, although there are many strange and unanswered questions about both.

Here's a primer on African airlines and this article discusses those in the business of carrying passengers and doesn't address the shadier operators.

The crash at Cotonou in West Africa of a Boeing 727 passenger plane belonging to a Guinea airline, piloted by a Libyan crew and without a proper flying licence, highlights problems of flying in Africa, experts say.

The Christmas Day crash in the African state of Benin killed 113 people, most of them Lebanese expatriates heading home for the holidays.

The plane, owned by Union des Transports Africains, botched its takeoff and skidded down the runway, smashing into a building before tumbling into the Gulf of Guinea.

"In these countries there is no structure for working practices or for maintaining checks on operations," said Francois Grangier, a French accident investigation specialist.

"They don't have the idea of airports as places sealed off, closed and given over totally to aeronautics," said Grangier, an Air France pilot.

"Neither is there any framework for radio communication, ie for navigation means," he said. "And there is no administration for this almost non-existent structure, only a semblance of organisation that exists solely on paper."

"Physical conditions are very tough for planes," Grangier said. "Sometimes you're landing on territory that destroys tyres, storms can be violent, corrosion is a major factor."

"But these African companies have an extremely unstable financial basis and they only want to make money, not to spend it, so it's tempting to get a hold of any old plane that can be exploited cheaply."

Pilot qualifications are yet another problem.

"The pilots are of all different nationalities because they can't find any other work," he said.

"African states don't have any pilots' schools or proper crew training facilities, so these pilots have to be trained abroad."

Thus African states end up giving the equivalent of licences or work permits to pilots with licences acquired in foreign countries, "something which a Europoean state such as France would never tolerate", Grangier noted.

Maxime Coffin, head of training and technical surveillance at France's civil aviation authority DGAC, identified problems such as obsolete fleets, pilots willing to work to lower standards and a lack of aircraft maintenance.

But Coffin insisted that flying is still the safest way to travel through Africa and denied some planes are just flying rustbuckets.

He said the norms of the International Civil Aviation Authority are more precise and kept under better surveillance than those of the International Maritime Organisation.

Unlike ships, he noted, planes cannot fly under flags of convenience. -- Sapa-

Doesn't practically every part of a plane have a serial number?

Yes, and you can track some of each and every plane's history at this site (warning, 1.5 Mbyte database):

http://www.jetphotos.net/census/listing.php?sort=model&model=B727

At the top in the blue bar, click on "A/C Model", then scroll down to 727-223(a) and look for the American Airlines planes. You'll find some brief history on both planes (and many other sold by American).

The crash plane is N862AA, the "missing" plane is one of the two purchased by Aerospace Sales (you'll see that in the notes in the rightmost field). Can't recall its reg number.

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