UN Plane Crash in Congo

Surprised it does not happen more often. Having flown on some UN flights they are... unusual. I told my boss in the Western Sahara that it was a miracle we did not have a fatal accident when I was there.
 
Blackhawk said:
Surprised it does not happen more often. Having flown on some UN flights they are... unusual. I told my boss in the Western Sahara that it was a miracle we did not have a fatal accident when I was there.
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Africa has actually some pretty low numbers of accidents vs hours flown. Most of the accidents are due to bad MX or airplanes flying outside of the limitations. Weather is usually not that bad or dangerous compared to the US or Europe, lots of flights go VFR and stay out of clouds.

Most western companies down there had really few accidents, and fatal ones are really rare.

Zymex, one of the biggest UN contractor in Africa, operating since the `60s never had a crash, same for Denim Air.
 
swisspilot said:
Africa has actually some pretty low numbers of accidents vs hours flown. Most of the accidents are due to bad MX or airplanes flying outside of the limitations. Weather is usually not that bad or dangerous compared to the US or Europe, lots of flights go VFR and stay out of clouds.

Most western companies down there had really few accidents, and fatal ones are really rare.
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My point had nothing to do with weather nor operations in Africa, but with UN operations. To say the operations were cavalier would be an understatement.
 
Blackhawk said:
My point had nothing to do with weather nor operations in Africa, but with UN operations. To say the operations were cavalier would be an understatement.
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This is why I mentioned Zymex and Denim, I think this last one has the most amount of hours flown for the UN in Sudan than any other company....I`m sure the type of flying is crazy, but way more accidents happen in sunny clear days in the patterns of American GA airports.
 
swisspilot said:
This is why I mentioned Zymex and Denim, I think this last one has the most amount of hours flown for the UN in Sudan than any other company....I`m sure the type of flying is crazy, but way more accidents happen in sunny clear days in the patterns of American GA airports.
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We should not be comparing operations with GA in America which does not really have a good safety record- it's worse than driving. I can attest from first hand experience that that overloading was common, safety concerns were marginal... I could go on. Even worse, getting statistics on the UN accident rate is difficult. Having seen first hand how the UN handles investigations I also have little faith in their ability to objectively investigate an accident and determine/learn from its causes.
 
Blackhawk said:
We should not be comparing operations with GA in America which does not really have a good safety record- it's worse than driving. I can attest from first hand experience that that overloading was common, safety concerns were marginal... I could go on. Even worse, getting statistics on the UN accident rate is difficult. Having seen first hand how the UN handles investigations I also have little faith in their ability to objectively investigate an accident and determine/learn from its causes.
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The overloading problems is present pretty much everywhere outside the US, Europe and some of the Commonwealth countries. Here in Brazil most cargo operators fly overweight, so they do at most flight schools...when you start flying outside the US, even just in Europe you understand how high the standards are in the US and how serious peoples are about safety (in the rest of the world they don`t really do anything about safety, the just pass around whatever the FAA says)...what is crazy is that what happens in GA reflect into the airlines, I don`t fly on most airliners here, I usually take the main flag carrier, the Brazilian Jet Blue and some other one I trust....the rest are just accidents waiting to happen.
 
swisspilot said:
The overloading problems is present pretty much everywhere outside the US, Europe and some of the Commonwealth countries. Here in Brazil most cargo operators fly overweight, so they do at most flight schools...when you start flying outside the US, even just in Europe you understand how high the standards are in the US and how serious peoples are about safety (in the rest of the world they don`t really do anything about safety, the just pass around whatever the FAA says)...what is crazy is that what happens in GA reflect into the airlines, I don`t fly on most airliners here, I usually take the main flag carrier, the Brazilian Jet Blue and some other one I trust....the rest are just accidents waiting to happen.
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And unfortunately the attitude carries over to the UN operations. But hey, it usually only ends up killing a bunch of third world peace keepers whose lives aren't worth anything anyway. So the accidents are just swept under the rug. Nothing to see here. Move on.
 
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