Episode 15 - The first jetliner crash, Comair flight 5191 on the wrong runway & a crocodile in a bag

Plane Crash Diaries

This is episode 15 and its all about unusual accidents including one that most likely involved a crocodile. But let’s start with what was called the first ever jetliner crash in 1953.That was an incident involving a de Havilland DH-106 Comet 1A registration CF-CUN operated by Canadian Pacific Airlines at Karachi-Mauripur RAF Station (OPMR) in Pakistan. The plane was a scant two months old when it crashed on take-off carrying eleven people, five crew and 6 passengers. The Comet aircraft was named "Empress of Hawaii" and was being delivered to Canadian Pacific Air Lines. The operator planned to use Comet to start a service between Sydney in Australia and Honolulu in Hawaii. ON April 28th 1953 it was being flown to Sydney after the flight crew had completed Comet Jet conversion training in the United Kingdom. It’s next phase of the long haul was supposed to be a hop from Karachi to Singapore. Another example of pilot error that has led to thousands of pages of legal documents changing hands was an accident on 27 August 2006 involving a CRJ-100ER jet operating as a Delta Connection Comair Flight 5191 scheduled to fly between Lexington in Kentucky and Atlanta in Georgia. The issue here was two runways side by side – but they are not parallel. Runway 22 and Runway 26. What that means is that they face 220 degrees, which is South West, and 260 degrees – which is west south west. This had confused pilots before, and was particularly confusing at night. The signage was also not satisfactory. Finally one of the more bizarre accidents in 2010 at Bandundu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which involved a crocodile. The aircraft was a 1991-built Let L-410 Turbolet, registration 9Q-CCN. On 25 August 2010, the jet Filair crashed on approach to Bandundu Airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing all but one of the 21 people on board. The aircraft had been operated as a round-robin domestic flight from Kinshasa the DRC capital, and doing a milk run stopping at Kiri, Bokoro, Semendwa and finally Bandundu. At 13:00 local time while on final approach to Bandundu Airport, the aircraft crashed into a house 1 kilometre short of the runway.