The pilot of the crashed Mozambique Airlines has been accused of downing the flight ‘intentionally’.
The episode on November 29 killed all 33 people onboard when the flight hit torrential rains and crashed in the swamps of Bwabwata National Park in Namibia.
Aviation officials say the pilot, Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes, brought down the plane deliberately.
After studying the flight recorders, they concluded that the autopilot had been manipulated in a way which “denotes a clear intention” to crash the plane.
The head of the country’s civil aviation institute, Joao Abreu, reported that the captain had locked himself inside the cockpit and would not allow his co-pilot back in while all the time ignoring warning signals.
“During these actions you can hear low and high-intensity alarm signals and repeated beating against the door with demands to come into the cockpit,” he said.
“All these operations required detailed knowledge of the plane’s controls, and showed a clear intention to crash the aircraft,” he said, adding that the pilot’s motives are unknown.
Preliminary reports show that the altitude was changed manually as well the speed. Proof was also obtained that the throttle was manually controlled.
The black boxes retrieved from the crash site were analysed at the US National Transport Safety Board in Washington. Everything indicated that the aircraft had been at normal cruising level and had good contact with the control tower.
The crash took the lives of six crew and 27 passengers, composed of 10 people from Mozambique, nine from Angola, five Portuguese and one citizen each of France, Brazil and China.
