143 Die in Gulf Air Crash

August 24, 2000

All 135 passengers and 8 crew members perished Wednesday night when an Airbus 320 operated by Gulf Air crashed into the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf three miles from its destination, the Bahrain airport.

The airliner had taken off from Cairo three hours earlier, and according to BBC News reports was making its third attempt to land when it crashed into the sea. Eyewitnesses were quoted as hearing an explosion and seeing a stream of fire coming from one of the plane’s engines just before it went down.

Bahrani authorities announced that they have recovered both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, and will start a full investigation of the crash today.

The A320’s manufacturer, Airbus Industrie, is sending a team to Bahrain to help in the investigation. According to aviation experts the plane has a good safety record. The last previous crash of an A320 occurred near Strasbourg in 1992.

Topics Aviation

Was this article valuable?

Here are more articles you may enjoy.