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169 feared dead in Kenya Airways crash

ABIDJAN: Rescuers abandoned the search on Monday for more survivors from a Kenya Airways passenger plane that crashed into the sea off Ivory Coast, killing 169 people.

The Airbus 310, en route to Nairobi via Lagos with 179 passengers and crew on board, slammed into the water on Sunday evening minutes after taking off from Abidjan airport. Fishing boats and navy craft plucked 10 survivors and scores of bodies from the sea. As night fell, the hunt was called off.

"The chances of finding any more survivors are zero," a military attache at the French embassy told Reuters.

Most of the 168 passengers on Flight KQ431 were Nigerians. Other travellers were from the United States, Canada, Japan, Western Europe, Kenya and other African states.

Kenya Airways said the aircraft was not known to have any technical problems and a spokesman declined to comment on speculation that desert sands blown up by strong seasonal winds could have affected its engines.

The survivors were taken to the PISAM private clinic in Abidjan. An ambulance worker said one of them had swum ashore. Fishermen pulled the corpses of victims onto their boats.

"We saw the bodies and got them out by hand. We went out in a Zodiac (inflatable craft) and pulled them out by hand," said the crewman of a French-owned vessel.

HUNT FOR BLACK BOXES

Experts from Kenya Airways and Airbus Industrie, the European manufacturers of the plane, were due in Abidjan on Monday evening to assist Ivory Coast crash investigators.

The hunt on Tuesday was likely to focus on recovering the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder "black boxes", which could provide vital clues to the cause of the crash.

"There will be an awful lot of work to be done investigating the causes of the crash," said Kenya Airways' technical manager Steve Clarke. "These things are not done quickly."

The flight from the Kenyan capital Nairobi was due to land in Lagos before Abidjan, but was forced to divert to Ivory Coast because of the seasonal "Harmattan" winds.

Fearful relatives gathered at the airports in Lagos and Nairobi. "We have only been married three months and I didn't even get to say goodbye," said a woman who gave her name as Anne, whose husband had been due to take the flight.

Eyewitnesses recounted how the plane shattered as it hit the water, about 3,000 metres from the shore.

"It broke up on impact. It broke into 100 pieces," medical worker Alain Thonar said.

Merchant sailors returning to port said they had seen an escape chute, a refrigerator and seats floating in the sea.

Gerard Vaudout, a maritime official at the French embassy in Abidjan, said the traditionally strong Atlantic currents off the Abidjan coast had hampered the rescue effort.

"We saw small pieces of the plane, but things are going in all directions because of the current," he said.

Some of the bodies bore no obvious mark of injury, but blood spilled from some body bags as they were carried ashore.

The European Airbus Industrie consortium said the aircraft was delivered to Kenya Airways in September 1986 and had accumulated some 58,000 flight hours in about 15,000 flights.

The crash was the first major airliner disaster of the year and the first crash suffered by Kenya Airways, which is 26-percent owned by Dutch carrier KLM.

Despite the airline's excellent safety record, Jane's Information Group forecast the disaster would reopen a debate on air safety in Africa. The International Federation of Airline Pilot Associations had warned of poor safety and air traffic control over large parts of the continent.-Reuters