Air Algérie Flight 5017 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to Algiers, Algeria, which crashed near Gossi, Mali, on 24 July 2014. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 twinjet with 110 passengers and 6 crew on board, operated by Swiftair for Air Algérie, disappeared from radar about fifty minutes after take-off. There were no survivors.
The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), assisting the Malian authorities, published an investigation report in April 2016, concluding that, while the aircraft was cruising on autopilot, ice accretion on the engines caused a reduction of thrust that led to a high-altitude stall. The crew was unable to recover from the stall, and the aircraft crashed to the ground. The BEA issued several recommendations to Air Algérie, the US Federal Aviation Administration, and the Governments of Burkina Faso and Mali. Until the fatality rate for the crash of an Il-76 in Gao is confirmed, the crash of Flight 5017 remains the deadliest accident in Malian aviation history.
Accident
Flight 5017 departed from Ouagadougou Airport at 1:15 local time (UTC) on 24 July 2014. It was scheduled to land at Houari Boumediene Airport, Algiers, at 5:10 local time (4:10 UTC).
The aircraft reached cruise altitude, flight level 310 (), 22 minutes after departure and attained its target speed of (IAS). About two minutes later, it began to gradually lose speed, and, though the speed did eventually drop to , the aircraft maintained FL310. After an unspecified length of time had passed, the aircraft began to descend, and the speed dropped to about . Afterwards, the aircraft entered a left-hand turn and began to lose altitude more rapidly, thus spiralling down. The flight data recording stopped at 1:47; at the time, the aircraft was at an altitude of and a speed of . It crashed into the ground at above sea level about a second later.
On 28 July, it was revealed that the flight crew had asked to return to Burkina Faso, after first requesting to deviate from course because of bad weather. There was a mesoscale convective system in the area at the time, and the aircraft had deviated to the left of its course to avoid it. Satellite images apparently identifying the light flare from the aircraft impact at the margins of the storm were captured.
Initially there were conflicting reports of the location of the crash. The aircraft's flight route took it over Mali, and it was reported to have disappeared between Gao and Tessalit. French forces reported detecting wreckage of the aircraft in an area between Gao and Kidal, in a desert region that is difficult to access. France sent a military unit to secure the wreckage of the Air Algérie plane. Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta said wreckage had been found in the country's northern desert, between Aguelhok and Kidal. There were also reports of wreckage being found near the town of Tilemsi in Mali, with officials from Algeria, Burkina Faso, and France having issued conflicting details. A memorial stele was erected at the crash site.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, MSN 53190, line number 2148. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines and first flew in June 1996 and was 18 years old at the time of the accident.
The aircraft was acquired by Swiftair, a charter flight operator, and re-registered EC-LTV in 2012 after being used by several airlines such as Flash Airlines and Avianca since it was delivered in 1996. It was wet-leased to Air Algérie in June 2014 to provide additional capacity during the summer 2014 season.
At the time of its loss, EC-LTV had flown 32,000 cycles. The director of the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) of France, Patrick Gandil, said the plane had been checked in France "two or three days ago" and that it was "in good condition".
