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Pilot Is Found to Have Crashed Plane in Namibia Intentionally
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 22, 2013

MAPUTO, Mozambique — Preliminary investigations into a November plane crash that killed all 33 people aboard showed that the pilot intentionally brought the Mozambique Airlines plane down, an aviation official said.


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The plane was bound for Angola with six crew members and 27 passengers, including 10 Mozambican, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, and one citizen each from France, Brazil and China, according to the airline. It went down on Nov. 29 in a Namibian national park near the border with Angola.

“There was an intention to crash the plane,” João Abreu, the chairman of the Mozambican Civil Aviation Institute, said Saturday after gathering recordings and preliminary investigations.

The pilot’s motives are unknown, and investigations will continue, he said, identifying the pilot as Herminio dos Santos Fernandes. It is believed that the co-pilot was in the bathroom at the time, he said.

Radar data showed that, at an obligatory reporting position over northern Botswana, the plane suddenly started to slow down. Its movements had been normal before that, with no mechanical functions, he said.

The altitude selector was then manually altered three times, bringing the plane’s altitude down from 38,000 feet to 592 feet, Mr. Abreu said.

Low- and high-intensity alarm signals can be heard on recovered recordings from the plane, along with the sounds of repeated banging on the cockpit door, he said. The report does not say who was banging.

The “black box” data recorders were recovered intact and sent to the United States National Transportation Safety Board in Washington to be transcribed.

Other indicators showed that manual operations were used, Mr. Abreu said, adding that “all these operations required detailed knowledge of the plane’s controls, and showed a clear intention to crash the aircraft.”

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A version of this article appears in print on December 23, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Pilot Found to Crash Plane in Namibia Intentionally.
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