Bad Weather Hampered Landing Effort

Angolan rescue crews have finished retrieving the bodies of the 13 victims from a Beech King Air B200 that crashed into the mountains of southern Angola, Africa, on Saturday.

Early reports indicated as many as 25 people were killed in the crash, but the flight manifest confirmed 13 passengers aboard the Beechcraft King Air 200 (type shown above), reports Agence-France Presse.

The plane was flying from the Angolan capital of Luanda to the southern city of Huambo, approximately 280 miles away, and encountered bad weather while preparing to land.

Januario Silvestre Pena, director of the ENANA airport authority company, told RNA radio the weather in Huambo at the time of the crash was "absolutely terrible" and that the plane "crashed straight into the mountain."

The King Air was owned by private airline Giro Globo, which operates charter flights in Angola. Among the dead was the owner of the plane, Valentin Anoes, 46, who was a senior member of Angola's ruling party, his son, and two Portuguese businessmen, Vasco Mendes de Almeida and Nuno Marques.

An inquiry has been opened into determining the cause of the crash.

Angola, a former Portuguese colony, is struggling to upgrade airports, bridges, roads and other infrastructure devastated by a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002.

The current economic boom, fueled by oil wealth, has created a growing demand for air travel throughout the country and has strained the capacity of the state-owned airline TAAG.

The southwest African country has a dismal record in air safety, primarily due to poor maintenance.

As ANN reported, a TAAG 737-200 crashed last June in the northern city of M'banza Congo, killing two passengers and injuring many others. That crash caused the European Union to place TAAG on its blacklist, prohibiting the airline from flying to European destinations.

FMI: www.angola.org/