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PIECES OF A Myanmar military plane which went missing with more than 100 soldiers and family members aboard have been found in the Andaman Sea today, a local official has said.
Navy ships and aircraft have been searching since the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers earlier today.
More than a dozen children are believed to be among the passengers on the plane, which was travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.
“Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 136 miles (218 km) away from Dawei city,” Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik, said, adding that the navy was still searching the sea.
An air force source confirmed to AFP that a navy search and rescue ship had found pieces of the plane in the sea an hour’s flight south of Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital.
The commander in chief’s office said the plane lost contact at about 1:35pm local time (7.05am Irish time) off Myanmar’s southern coast.
There was conflicting information about the number of people on board. Giving an updated figure, the office said 106 passengers were on board — soldiers and family members — along with 14 crew members.
The air force source said more than a dozen of those on board were children.
Four naval ships and two air force planes were sent to search for the plane, which was flying at an altitude of more than 18,000 feet (5,486 metres).
It is monsoon season in Myanmar, but there were no reports of bad weather at the time the plane went missing.
Military air woes
The plane was a Y-8F-200 four-engine turboprop, a Chinese-made model still commonly used by Myanmar’s military for transporting cargo. The army said it was delivered in March last year and had logged 809 flying hours.
The former military junta bought many of the aircraft from Myanmar’s giant neighbour during their 50 years of isolated rule, when they were squeezed by Western sanctions.
A former executive at the aviation ministry said many of the aircraft in Myanmar’s fleet were old and decrepit.
“Myanmar air force has very bad safety performance,” he said, asking to remain nameless.
Myanmar’s military fleet has a chequered recent history of plane crashes. All five crew died when an air force plane burst into flames soon after taking off from the capital Naypyidaw in February last year.
Three army officers were killed the following June when their Mi-2 helicopter crashed into a hillside and burst into flames in south-central Bago.
A surge in demand for air travel as Myanmar opens up has stretched the impoverished country’s aviation infrastructure, in particular in remote airports. Commercial jets have also suffered frequent incidents.
The worst in recent years was in 2012 when an Air Bagan jet crash-landed in thick fog and burst into flames short of the runway at Heho airport, killing one passenger and a motorcyclist on the ground.
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Awful sad. Thoughts with the families.
A good few Irish lads out in Dubai working for their engineering and maintenance department. Thinking of Ye lads. For all the armchair crash investigators, no pilot takes off with the thought that his actions will kill all on board. I’ll keep my opinions until after we have an crash investigation report. RIP.
You are forgetting the actions of Andreas Lubitz then.
True
@tom burke, my connection with the ‘manx2′ crash was budget airline & it says the plane was ‘circling’ for 2hrs when other planes had diverted but obviously this crew were under pressure to land at that airport as were the crew of ‘manx2′ flight
Sounds like a similar chain of events that caused the ‘manx2′ flight to crash in cork a few years ago,
Manx crashed in poor visibility, not stormy conditions. Indeed when it is foggy it is rarely windy.
Not that similar.
Ahh tom the aviation expert is back ..
Ah Chris
I’m merely stating facts.
In fact I’m one of the few who is not speculating.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious Tom, but in stating that this crash is not that similar to the manx crash, you’re speculating on the precise cause(s) of this crash.
Avina
You are making this painful.
I never speculated anything about the cause of the crash. All I’m doing is pointing out the facts that the weather in this incident and the weather in the Cork incident were very different.
I’m not speculating. I’m dealing with facts. There is a big difference.
Lubitz was a co-pilot. I am aware of this incident and others where members of the flight crew flew the aircraft into terrain. Hope that made your day pointing that out
Whatever pal.
There’s a video out there purporting to be of this plane crash. Doesn’t look like any accidental crash in bad weather I’ve ever seen. Plane comes down hard and fast on an almost 90 degree angle.
Sounds like poor judgement alright. Pressure to land instead of divert. If bad weather then should have diverted to airport with ILS. The mistake was the 2 hours circling…ate up the divert allowance.
We simply don’t know.
It’s all speculation at this stage.
But we do know its rarely foggy and windy at the same time …lol….but that is correct
It is correct Chris. Glad you came around.
There is footage of it from cctv and it looks like it nose dived into the ground? It looks nothing like a plane missing the runway. Rip to all souls lost.
Shocking. Know a few pilots down there.
6h30m flying a 738 with one confirmed and a possible second go around? Fuel?
Could of course be off the mark but if you listen to communication with ATC there’s no mention of fuel. All conversations relate to weather. That said bigger and better airlines cut it fine with fuel so hardly out of the question. It’s saying the wing hit the ground which could mean wind but it’s coming in very steep and very fast. So I could be pilot error. I’d say it’s best to leave it to the experts.
Magoo he meant anyone in their right mind you clown
The speculation police are out in force today.
Ya watch one series of air crash investigator and people become experts!!!
@quiggers im not trying to be an aviation expert nor an air crash investigation expert but like yourself i do have friends in that field & i do read all these reports from accidents so i do have to a ‘certain extent’ & i use that very carefully understand the reasons behind these incidents
How do you know the captain made any “fatal decision” ?
@ Helena…
I wish the journal got their facts right! Poor journalism, that’s what it’s called. Not ALL passengers were Russian: 44 were Russian, 2 Indians, 8 Ukranians & 1 Uzbek. The crew consisted of a captain from Cyprus (who made the fatal decision to land instead of diverting, did he think he was invisible and will be able to land when many other planes decided to divert?!), co-pilot from Spain, air hostess from Colombia and the rest of the crew from the Seychelles. More accurate info is here: http://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/world/how-is-the-weather-sir-audio-of-final-cockpit-conversation-of-doomed-flydubai-738-jet-before-crash-in-poor-visibility/ar-BBqGnJX?li=AAaxjhv
Invisible?
I have no idea what that word means in this context.
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