Rough arrival at Ndeke

From Great North Road

Zambia Airways were replacing their old HS748s (remember those rattling noisy flights to Kasaba Bay) with spiffing brand new ATR42-300s.

It was a straight swap - some old turbo-props for brand new state of the art French Italian turbo props.

The crews went for training at Tolouse in Southern France. They also went for simulator training in Finland of all places.

Now the crash was really a silly thing. The flight was a training flight. It was supposed to be a flight from Lusaka touching Ndola and Kitwe.

The instructor was a French pilot and his pupil a Zambian pilot was in the copilot's seat.

The whole flight was a comedy of errors. The first was they found themselves 50 kilometres off course circling Kitwe instead of Ndola looking for an airport. The second was they attempted to land at the old Ndeke airport, long abandoned. This aerodrome was closed because the smelter fumes used to make an approach hazardous as the fumes had an effect akin to fog. It had a undamaged part at least 300 metres long then it had across a large furrow at least 2 metres deep and wide.

The bumbling instructor and pilot made a good landing that turned into a disaster when the undercarriage was damaged when the plane ran into the furrow.

The result was one stuck, brand new aircraft. Ndola tower meanwhile had been frantically radioing for the missing aircraft and eventually declared an emergency.

The plane was eventually dug out, repaired on site and returned to Aerospatiale (reg number D-BAAA). Zambia did not order any planes to replace it and only kept 2 (9J-AFC and 9J-AFD) and not the three ATRs they ordered.

As for the pilots, well the Zambian one was grounded and was the butt of many jokes at the Lusaka Flying Club. His excuses went like this.

1. Ndeke still appears on all charts as usable. (Yes, it does but only for emergencies).

2. It had runway markings exactly like Ndola's.(the two number at the end of a runway indicates heading, e.g. 09 means 090). Well apparently Ndola and Ndeke have the same numbers. Yes, but anybody in Zambia can tell the difference between kitwe and Ndola from the air.

3. He was only following what the Instructor told him to do.

That is the full and correct story about the plane that landed at a derelict airport in Kitwe.

Contributed by Brian Mulenga.

October 2001