ANOTHER ANTONOV CRASH ROCKS SUDAN
Information is emerging from Khartoum that the Sudanese Air Force has lost an Antonov aircraft of unknown specific type earlier today. The plane reportedly developed engine trouble about an hour’s drive out of Khartoum at Jebel Aulia, loaded with supplies and about 20 troops destined for deliver at Al Fasher in North Darfur, where the regime fights a war of attrition and burned earth to subdue indigenous African populations seeking freedom from the slave rule of the regime.
The reports at present speak of a number of dead but also of survivors although this could at this early stage not be independently confirmed.
Sudan has suffered a significant number of civilian and military air accidents, often with former Soviet Union era aircraft involved, as is the case here, and suspicions regularly focused on poor maintenance, often allegedly falsified maintenance records and lack of crew training on simulators, something ICAO demands twice a year via member states civil aviation authorities. While many African countries have moved to ban the registration and in part even use of these ancient aircraft, the Sudan – as has the Congo DR with an equally bad aviation record – has continued to permit the use of such stone age birds, for civilian and military aviation, now once more paying a huge price in terms of loss of human life for it.
Watch this space for breaking news from Africa’s aviation scene.
