Air Algerie plane with 116 people on board crashes into a river.

Wow another crash!!!! I seriously think there is a problem with with the aviation industry. Read the full report here:

An Air Algerie has crashed into river Niger in Africa according to Chinese State TV reports. 110 passengers and 6 cabin crew members were on board the flight.

The plane had taken off from Burkina Faso's capital 

Ouagadougou. Air navigation services lost track of the plane 50 minutes after its takeoff.

Initial reports say that the plane was flying through an area where there were violent storms. The plane is an MD83 Airbus which was headed to Algiers. Spanish private airline company Swiftair had earlier said in a notice posted on its website that the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 0117 local time and was supposed to land in Algiers at 0510 local time but never reached its destination.

METAR Weather report:
DFFD 240100Z 23008KT 9999 FEW020 BKN100 26/23 Q1015 NOSIG 01:00 UTC / 01:00 local time:

"Wind 220 degrees at 6 knots; Visibility 10+ km; Thunderstorm; few clouds at 2000 feet

 AGL few CB clouds at 3300 feet AGL; broken clouds at 10000 feet AGL; Temperature 

25°C; Dewpoint: 23°C; Pressure 1014 mb"

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TransAsia Airways crashes in Taiwan

I don't know what is happening nowadays in the aviation industry. There are developing reports that a TransAsia Airways jet has crashed while attempting an emergency landing.

Read the full news here:-

Wreckage of Flight GE222 

At least 47 people were feared dead after a TransAsia Airways plane crashed Wednesday while trying to make an emergency landing in stormy weather in the Penghu Islands off the coast of Taiwan.

Taiwan had been suffering strong winds and torrential rains Wednesday from Typhoon Matmo.

Taiwan's Transport Minister Yeh Kuang-shih was quoted by the government's Central News Agency as saying another 11 people were injured after the ATR-72 aircraft crashed outside the airport in Xixi village while attempting a second landing.

Yeh said flight carried 58 passengers and crew members. CNA agency, quoting a local fire brigade chief, had initially reported the death toll at 51.

Flight GE222 was flying from Kaohsiung, a major city on the east coast of Taiwan's main island, to Magong, one of two airports on Penghu Island, which is located halfway between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait.

The Taiwan News reports that aircraft took off more than 90 minutes late because of the poor weather and the pilot reportedly asked to wait until 7:06 p.m. before being allowed to land.

The plane slammed into the ground in the village, setting fire to at least two houses. Photos in the local media from the crash site showed a handful of firefighters using flashlights to look at wreckage in the darkness.

Taiwanese media identified the pilot as 60-year-old Lee Yi-liang and his co-pilot as Chiang Kuan-hsing, 39, and said each had flown over 20,000 hours, according toTaiwan News.

Although the center of Typhoon Matmo had already swept through the islands, heavy rain and strong winds from the system continued to batter the area.

A radar image from the moment of the plane crash showed heavy rain over the area, AccuWeather reports.

CNN International meteorologist Brandon Miller reported that the storm brought 10 inches of rain in the area and winds up to 47 mph.

Airports in the adjacent mainland Chinese province of Fujian had canceled flights and trains ahead of Matmo's arrival.

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2 Ukrainian jet fighters shot down in rebel-held area

Russian-backed separatists shot down two Ukrainian attack jets Wednesday in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said, a new sign of intensified fighting for control of the region near Russia's border.

The attacks come a day after senior U.S. intelligence officials warned that Russia was continuing to supply rebels with arms and training despite U.S. evidence that separatists used Russian weaponry to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last week, killing all 298 aboard. The separatists and Russia blame Ukraine's military for downing the Boeing 777.

The defense ministry said on its Facebook page that the jets were among four Russian-built fighters that were returning to base after providing air support for Ukrainian troops near the border.

The pilots of both jets ejected from the aircraft, the ministry said. Their condition was not immediately reported.

Ukraine's parliament approved a presidential decree Wednesday on a third mobilization of men to be called up to serve in the army. The first two mobilizations took place on March 17 and May 6.

As of Tuesday, 280 troops have died in the conflict and 780 have been wounded, according to Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey. The national government has vowed to regain control of key cities in eastern Ukraine now held by the separatists.

Three senior U.S. intelligence officials who briefed reporters Tuesday said rebels have shot down about a dozen aircraft over the past several months. The rebels stepped up their attacks on Ukrainian planes after its military had begun to make progress against the rebels, according to the officials, who shared intelligence findings on condition that they not be identified by name.

The Ukraine military's ability to attack rebels from the air and move troops quickly by helicopter provides an advantage over the rebels.

Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksiy Dmitrashkovsky said the Sukhoi-25 attack aircraft were downed in an area called Savur Mogila in the Shaktersky region near the Russian border.

The Sukhoi-25 are typically used for supporting ground troops and may have been flying low. Many of the aircraft downed by rebels were attacked by ground fire.

The Malaysia plane was flying above 33,000 feet when it was downed by a sophisticated SA-11 surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory, according to evidence the U.S. intelligence officials described. They said Russia provided the missile system and training on how to use it.

The site of Wednesday's attack is only a few miles from where the Malaysia Airlines jetliner crashed.

The U.S. military is supplying Ukraine's military with a $33 million package of "non-lethal" aid, including radios, body armor, first aid kits and night-vision goggles, the Pentagon said.

Ukraine's military has asked for arms and ammunition, but for now the Pentagon said it was continuing to focus on the non-lethal aid.

In addition, the Pentagon in coming weeks is sending a second assessment team to Ukraine to examine ways to provide long-term assistance to Ukraine's military. The plans for the assessment team were in the works before the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight.

source: www.usatoday.com 

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Europe-US Officials Say They Suspect SA-11 or SA-20 Missiles Brought Down Malaysia Jet

American officials, who said a surface-to-air missile was responsible for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on Thursday, said they suspected that the missile was either an SA-11 or SA-20, both Russian made.

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777/200 ER 

In the early hours of the investigation, determining clear accountability for a missile attack was impossible, in part because all three of the forces in or near the conflict area - the pro-Russian separatists, the Ukrainian military and the Russian military - could possess SA-11s, which are one of many legacy weapons from the Soviet Union circulating through this war.

Known in Russian as a "Buk" and among Nato nations as a "Gadfly," the SA-11 was first designed in the 1970s. Successor variants are in the inventories of both Russian and Ukrainian air-defense units. A Buk system is vehicle-mounted and self-propelled, which means it can be moved around the battlefield, making it hard to track.

Buk / SA 11

For ordnance, the SA-11 system fires roughly 18-foot-long missiles that can reach much higher than the reported altitude - 33,000 feet — of the Malaysian passenger jet. (Some variants of the missiles can reach above 70,000 feet.) Each missile carries a large high-explosive warhead, against which a thin-skinned Boeing 777 would have no defense.

SA-11s are normally operated in a battery, with a command vehicle and a separate target-acquisition radar. According to a written analysis by Doug Richardson of IHS Jane's, a sole SA-11 vehicle "can also operate in stand-alone mode."
"Its built-in radar is normally used to track the target being engaged, but can be operated in a target-detection mode, allowing it to autonomously engage targets that were present in the radar's forward field of view," he wrote.
This would mean the separatists might be capable of using an SA-11, too, even without a full battery. (Recent interviews with rebels by The New York Times found that many were veterans of the Soviet or Ukrainian militaries, including air-defense units.)
But whether the rebels possess SA-11s, as part of a battery or otherwise, is an unsettled question.


Ukrainian and American officials have accused Russia of providing the separatists with many sophisticated and powerful weapons, and the rebels have also captured many Ukrainian weapons, meaning they could have obtained SA-11s from either source.

A social media post attributed to Igor Strelkov, the shadowy pro-Russian commander, showed him claiming to have captured Buk missiles. That claim has not been verified independently, and the rebels have been given to boasts.

The Ukrainian government released audio recordings that it claimed were intercepted phone calls between rebels discussing shooting down the plane.

The separatists have repeatedly spoken of other, verifiable air-defense capabilities, and have often been seen with other surface-to-air missiles — heat-seeking, shoulder-fired missiles known as Manpads.

With maximum elevations that are not much beyond 10,000 feet, Manpads cannot reach to the cruising altitudes of commercial passenger jets. Both pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian officials have said, however, that they have shot down helicopters in the conflict.

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Malaysia Airlines 17 (MH 17) CONSPIRACY THEORY

Putin may have been target of plane shot down presidential Jet & MH17 intersectioned at same point & echelon minutes apart

“I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft – 15:44 Moscow time,” a source told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

“The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost identical“, the source added.

Meanwhile, the WSJ reports that US Intelligence detected a surface-to-air missile launch and tracked the explosion of the plane, confirming that MH-17 was in fact shot down.

Similarities between Putin's and Malaysian Airlines Planes

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Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH 17)

A Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine by militants on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard, a Ukrainian interior ministry official was quoted as saying by Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

The aircraft, which other sources said was a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, Anton Gerashchenko said, adding that it was hit by a ground-to-air missile.

There was no further confirmation of the report, although Ukrainian officials said local residents had found wreckage.

 Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed it had lost contact with its flight MH-17 from Amsterdam. "The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace," it said.

Gerashchenko was quoted as saying: "A civilian airliner travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur has just been shot down by a Buk anti-aircraft system ... 280 passengers and 15 crew have been killed."

Interfax-Ukraine quoted another Ukrainian official as saying the plane disappeared from radar when it was flying at 10,000 metres (33,000 feet), a typical cruising altitude for airliners.

It came down at Torez, near Shakhtersk, some 40 km (25 miles) from the Russia border. The area has been the scene of fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels.

Ukraine has accused Russia of taking an active role in the four-month-old conflict in recent days and accused it earlier on Thursday of shooting down a Ukrainian fighter jet - an accusation that Moscow denied.

My heartfelt condolence to all the families involved in this accident. My their souls rest in peace. 

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