That crocodile crash

When a Filair Let 410 passenger flight crashed near Bandundu airport in the DR Congo in late August, the cause was something of a mystery. An aeroplane on a scheduled domestic passenger flight flown by two expat pilots (a Belgian captain, also the owner of Filair, and a British copilot) suddenly dived into the ground on final approach after an apparently trouble-free trip.

The crash killed the three crew and 17 of the 18 passengers, and the initial presumption was that the aircraft had run out of fuel.

Investigators, however, found sufficient fuel on board for the aircraft to have landed safely, and there was no obvious technical failure.

The sole surviving passenger has recently recovered sufficiently to tell the accident investigators what he saw happening: a passenger had brought a small crocodile on board in a bag, and it escaped into the cabin as the aircraft was approaching the airport.

The survivor described how passengers rushed forward to escape the reptile, and the aircraft nosed down and crashed.

It was a full cabin - the normal configuration for a Let 410 is 19 seats, and there were 18 people on board.

Many have asked whether the passenger action, if it is confirmed by the investigation  (the croc was found and killed after the accident) could really have caused the aircraft to be sufficiently de-stabilised to cause it to crash. The answer is yes, particularly when the aircraft was so close to the ground that the pilots would have had only seconds to attempt to resolve the situation before impact.

Press reports of this story have been slightly confused by the fact that another Let 410, this time on a cargo flight, crashed fatally in the DR Congo on 21 October, just as the croc story emerged. The second crash looks as if it may have a more conventional cause: it happened just after take-off from Bukavu, which is a high altitude airport, and is believed to have followed loss of power in one of the engines. Both pilots died, and there was no-one else on board. 

If the survivor's description of the passenger reaction to the croc is confirmed by evidence, and is determined to have been the primary cause of the crash, the painfully obvious solution to prevent further accidents like it is to prevent passengers bringing crocodiles - or other dangerous animals - on board. But in the DR Congo, which has had the worst aviation accident record in the world for two decades, this sort of event is, unfortunately, just 'part of life's rich tapestry'.