UTA Flight 141
{{Crash infobox|name=UTA Flight 141|Date=
December 25 2003 |Type=Take-off crash |Site=
Cotonou Airport, Benin |Fatalities=141 |Injuries=24 (1 on ground) |Aircraft Type=Boeing 727-223 |Operator=Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée|Tail Number=3X-GDO |Passengers=153 |Crew=10 |Survivors = 22 |
UTA Flight 141 was a
charter flight operated by
Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée.
On
25 December,
2003, the airplane crashed in the
Bight of Benin, killing 151 of the 163 occupants, most of them
Lebanese.
Flight 141 was flown on 3X-GDO, an ex-American Airlines
Boeing 727-223, on the day of the crash. The airliner had begun its flight in
Guinea and stopped in
Sierra Leone and
Benin on its way to
Lebanon via Libya. Many of the passengers were workers who were flying back home to Lebanon to enjoy the holidays with their families.
The aircraft ran off the end of the runway, impacting several ground structures including an occupied outbuilding and crashed on the ocean beach because it was severely overloaded with passengers and cargo and the aircraft's center of gravity was well out of limits, according to the
French Civil Aviation Organization's investigation of the accident.
Exact passenger numbers are impossible to determine, as it is thought that there were more passengers aboard than were listed on the manifest.
Some newspaper reports have led many to suspect that the airplane used for this flight was, in fact, an airplane that had disappeared about one year earlier, along with flight engineer and aircraft "repo man"
Ben Charles Padilla. This rumor turned out to be unfounded.
*
UTA Flight 141 at the
Aviation Safety Network Database (Summary of the French accident investigation)
*
English translation of investigation at the
Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses
