By Drew Hinshaw and Stacy Meichtry
Investigators are looking into whether Air Algérie flight 5017
was downed by storms along the southern rim of the Sahara, killing
all those aboard and renewing questions about safety in a region
where rapid growth in air traffic outpaces improvements in
infrastructure and the management of airspace.
French troops were combing a three-hundred-meter radius of sand,
soot and twisted metal debris near the town of Gossi in Northern
Mali. The painstaking search, which began late on Thursday after
the plane went missing for nearly a day, uncovered one of the
jetliners' two black boxes but no signs of life.
"There are, alas, no survivors," French President François
Hollande somberly told reporters on the steps of the Élysée Palace
in Paris. The French government put the death toll at 118
people.
Officials in France, which lost 54 nationals on the flight,
cautioned it was too early to ascertain the cause of the crash. But
French officials ruled out the possibility the plane was shot down,
which is a source of concern in a region rife with jihadist
insurgents.
The fact that crash debris is concentrated in a relatively small
area, officials said, suggested the plane had disintegrated on
impact rather than breaking up in the air as the result of a midair
explosion.
Instead, investigators were exploring the possibility the Boeing
MD-83 ran into sand and lightning storms that severed
ground-control communication with the plane and caused the crew to
lose their grip on the aircraft. "What I can tell you with
certainty is that some significant storms were active in the area,"
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. "The crew specifically
signaled its intention to change course due to weather before
contact was lost."
Africa remains one of the world's most accident-prone regions
for air travel, despite recent improvements in the continent's
safety record. Africa's airports and air-traffic control are
straining to keep up with a burgeoning air-travel industry fueled
by economic growth across the region.
Passenger volumes grew 5.5 % last year and 7.5% the year before,
according to International Air Transport Association estimates. And
airlines are racing to buy enough planes to keep pace with
demand.
In Ghana, the number of local airlines has tripled from two to
six in the space of three years. In Nigeria, airports that just a
generation ago didn't receive U.S. carriers now welcome daily
flights from the likes of Delta Air Lines, Inc. War-torn Ivory
Coast boasts Air Côte d'Ivoire, an Air France-KLM Group unit. Even
tiny Gambia has its own regional-carrier, Gambia Bird.
The surge in African air travel has come despite the
difficulties of flying there. Information on weather along flight
paths often is unreliable. Pilots on the continent complain of
patchy radar coverage. The protocol for switching from one control
tower to another relies on outdated practices, some analysts say.
And some air-traffic controllers appear inattentive and are
difficult to understand or go silent over the radio, pilots
say.
Meanwhile, many airports lack runway lights or functioning
electric generators to kick in when blackouts strike. Only 11 of
the continent's 54 countries have met 60% of the steps demanded by
an International Civil Aviation Organization audit, which include
measures like training ground crew and renovating hangar
facilities.
"Safety in Africa is still not where it should be," said Nick
Fadugba, chief executive of London-based African Aviation
consultancy. "It is getting better slowly, but there's a lot left
to be done."
The airplane that crashed on Thursday was operated by Swiftair
SA, a Spanish charter company, with a Spanish crew. Swiftair said
it was "too early to talk about the causes of the accident and we
are not in a position to give additional information."
Burkina Faso, where the flight departed, has one of Africa's
better safety records, said Elijah Chingosho, secretary-general of
the African Airlines Association, an umbrella group of carriers on
the continent. "The authorities there are quite good," he said
But Mali has a weak central government and in effect is a
divided nation, with its northern regions under the control of
Tuareg minorities. On Friday, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar
Keita asked France to lead the inquiry into the crash, Mr. Fabius
said, with the help of Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Spain.
The location of one black-box recorder was a sign the inquiry
into the crash was making progress after a rocky start. The
jetliner went missing for nearly a day after ground controllers
lost contact with it over northern Mali. French jet fighters combed
the area's arid landscape for more than six hours without finding a
trace of the crash, according to the French military.
A breakthrough occurred late on Thursday when officials in
Burkina Faso got a phone call from a villager who had spotted the
plane's wreckage near the town of Gossi, not far from the northern
city of Gao.
France dispatched a Reaper drone aircraft to verify the wreckage
before dispatching a hundred troops in helicopters and trucks to
the area in the early hours of Friday, army spokesman Col. Gilles
Jaron said on Friday. They were joined by 60 Malian troops and 40
Dutch soldiers, Mr. Fabius said.
French officials noted the crash site is about a six-hour drive
from Gao. Sandy terrain and stormy weather were rendering the
recovery efforts very difficult, Mr. Fabius said.
Write to Stacy Meichtry at stacy.meichtry@wsj.com and Inti
Landauro at inti.landauro@wsj.com
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