Plane Crashes Kills 18 in Tunis

An Egypt Air flight jolted in the air and sparks surged through the cabin before the plane crashed as it tried to land in Tunis, said a survivor of the accident that killed at least 18 people.

The plane, a Boeing 737 carrying 62 people from Cairo, nearly split into two after ramming into a hill about six kilometers (four miles) from the Tunis-Carthage airport on Tuesday.

EgyptAir issued a statement saying 18 people had died and 25 were injured. Authorities at the Tunis airport said several people walked away unhurt.

Egyptian officials headed to Tunisia on an overnight flight to conduct an investigation. Families of those on board the crashed plane were to travel with them.

The weather was foggy and rainy at the time of the crash and the control tower had lost contact with the plane a few seconds before it went down, just after a distress call from the pilot, according to the national news agency, TAP.

A Tunisian woman, Narjess Hadada, told The Associated Press that the plane encountered turbulence as it prepared to land.

``We felt jolts in the plane, and a member of the crew reassured us that it was only clouds. Suddenly, we saw sparks in the plane and then it hit the ground,'' she said.

Hadada grabbed her two children and dashed out of the plane through a huge gaping hole left by the crash. ``I feel like I've been born a second time,'' she said.

Other witnesses said the pilot released fuel shortly before the plane went down, a move that may have saved lives by preventing the wreckage from catching on fire.

Mohamed Amine, the head flight attendant, told the AP he believes ``bad weather and bad visibility'' were at the root of the accident. Amine spoke at Ariana Hospital in Tunis, where he was being treated for minor injuries.

EgyptAir's vice president for safety, Shaker Qilada, denied reports that the plane was making an emergency landing.

``It was a normal landing approach,'' Qilada told the AP in Cairo.

Minister of Aviation Ahmed Shafeeq held an emergency meeting with top aviation officials in Cairo.

EgyptAir initially said 63 people were on board but later lowered the number to 62 and corrected the nationalities of some of those on board. The 54 passengers included 20 Egyptians, 17 Tunisians, five Pakistanis, three Algerians, three Jordanians, two Chinese, one Briton, one Saudi, one Palestinian and one Libyan. The entire crew was Egyptian.

Poor visibility at the time of the crash was worsened by a sandy wind blowing from the Sahara desert. The sandy wind is known in Arabic as ``khamsin,'' a name rooted in the Arabic word for the number 50. It refers to 50 days each year when winds blow sand from the desert, creating a suffocating, dirty blanket of air that hangs over the sky.

On Oct. 31, 1999, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the eastern United States, killing all 217 people aboard.

Before 1999, it had been 23 years since EgyptAir had a major crash. In 1976, an EgyptAir plane crashed during approach to the Bangkok, Thailand, airport, killing 72 passengers and crew members.

(China Daily May 8, 2002)