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Air Algerie plane crashes with 116 on board
Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali’s National Civil Aviation Agency, said that a search was under way for the missing flight. “We do not know if the plane is Malian territory,” he told reporters. “Aviation authorities are mobilized in all the countries concerned – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain.”
Aviation websites said the missing aircraft, one of four MD-83s owned by Swiftair, was 18-years-old. The aircraft’s two engines are made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.
U.S. planemaker McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing, stopped producing the MD-80 airliner family in 1999 but it remains in widespread use. “Boeing is aware of the report (on the missing aircraft). We are awaiting additional information,” a spokesman for the planemaker said.
Swiftair has a relatively clean safety record, with 5 accidents since 1977, 2 of which caused a total of 8 deaths, according to the Washington-based Flight Safety Foundation.
Air Algerie’s last major accident was in 2003 when one of its planes crashed shortly after take-off from the southern city of Tamanrasset, killing 102 people. In February this year, 77 people died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain in eastern Algeria.
Source: Reuters
