Flight 1121 Air Moorea

The flight 1121 of Air Moorea is an air crash having taken place on August 9th, 2007 in French Polynésie. A Twin Otter of the company Air Moorea crashe shortly after the takeoff of the Temae airport in the island of Moorea. The twenty occupants, the pilot and the 19 passengers died. The plane was to join the airport of PAPEETE, located at 18 kilometers of the place of takeoff.

The apparatus

The plane was a DHC 6-300 Twin Otter registered F-OIQI. It belonged to the company Air Moorea. It had accomplished its first flight for the company on November 17th, 2006 and had passed a technical control on July 19th, 2007, that is to say two weeks before the accident. It stole 32.833 hours. The morning of the crash landing, it had already carried out 3 return tickets.

The crew

All the flights of Air Moorea - except in the event of formation - are carried out with only one team member, the pilot, in agreement with the legislation in force. This one, Michel Santurenne, were 53 years old and had carried out 3 500 hours of vol. He had worked for Air Moorea for a few months. The autopsy practiced on its body did not reveal infarction or of faintness diabetic. The shortly after the drama, Christian Vernaudon, the general president-director of Air Tahiti, the head office of Air Moorea, announced that the crew would be “until new order” made up of a pilot and a copilot “for psychological reasons in order to reassure the passengers, but also to answer the agitation caused among the others pilot”.

Flight

The crash landing occurred on the flight 1121 between Moorea and Tahiti. The apparatus took off of Temae, the airport of Moorea, towards 12:00 with the pilot and 19 passengers on board. It was crushed in the prolongation of the track after 1,85 km of flight, on the open ocean. Some bathers, in particular the customers of a hotel located opposite the place of the crash landing, and the yachtmen were pilot crash landing. Their testimonys are sometimes contradictory.

“Twin Otter took off. It was not very high. The weather was splendid, but, of only one blow, the engines made funny noise then were straightforwardly cut whereas the plane was still in phase of takeoff. Then the plane fell, not like a stone but while following its trajectory. The impact was not extremely. I saw the tail floating with the vertical a few moments then it was inserted”
“the plane has seems it have difficulties of rising. Then it plunged and one heard the noise of an explosion”

A mechanic of a company of helicopter affirmed on his side to have seen the plane falling Net, about thirty seconds after takeoff.

Assessment

On the 20 people on board, 14 bodies were fished out. Six are always reported missing, probably of the passengers who had taken seat with the back of the apparatus. The 14 bodies were recovered by fishermen who were in the zone at the time of the crash landing. Those attached certain bodies to buoys so preventing that they do not run. Six fishermen received, a few days after the drama, a medal of the hands of the president of the Country, Gaston Tong Sang. Among the victims there is, inter alia, 5 members of the Polynesian ministry of the Environment, 2 senior officials of the European Union, 2 Australian tourists and 5 inhabitants of Moorea.

Official reactions

The president of the French Polynesia, Gaston Tong Sang, which went immediately to the site and flew over the places of the catastrophe, evoked a “cruel mourning for Polynesia as for his government”. Michele Alliot-Marie, Minister of Interior Department, has as for it “informs all the families touched by this drama of its sincere condolences and its saddened support”. Christian Estrosi, Secretary of State charged with Overseas, went to the site and launched a crown of flowers to the sea. Jean-Louis Borloo and Dominique Bussereau, in load of Transport, made a point “of expressing their deep sadness with the families touched by this catastrophe” and stressed that “an investigation is in hand in order to determine the precise causes of the accident”.

Two days of mourning were issued in Polynesia.

Causes of the accident

A judicial enquiry, entrusted to the gendarmerie, was launched. In parallel, a team of the BEA, the Office of investigations and analyzes arrived to Polynesia to try to include/understand the causes of the crash landing. The , an apparatus which records all the noises of the cockpit was located, with a depth ranging between - 430 and - 600 Mr. the operations of recovery of the apparatus must be carried out by the ship cable-laying ship Island-of-D . Its Sistership , Island of Batz , had intervened at the time of the drama of Charm-El-Sheik in Egypt.

References

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