Cameroon Airlines Flight 3701 was an air accident that occurred on 3 December 1995. The Boeing 737-200, registration TJ-CBE, crashed after it lost control near Douala, Cameroon. On its second approach to Douala International Airport, power was lost to one engine. The accident killed 71 passengers and crew. Five people survived injured.
The aircraft involved in the accident, manufactured in 1985, was a Boeing 737-2K9 registered as TJ-CBE with serial number 23386.[1][2] It was equipped with two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15A engines.[3] The aircraft had flown a total of 18,746 hours in 23,233 flight.[4] It was directly acquired from Boeing, and it was delivered to the airline on 30 August 1985. By 1 December 1995, the airline's fleet comprised two Boeing 737-200C, one Boeing 737-200, one Boeing 747-200C, and one HS 748-2B.[5]
Passengers and crew
The captain was 45-year-old Sali Younoussa Aman. He was hired by Cameroon Airlines in 1983 and had accumulated a total of 7,990 flight hours, 5,923 hours of which were on the Boeing 737.[6] The first officer was 44-year-old first officer Claude Emile Lombo. He was hired by the airline in 1978 and had accumulated 5,850 hours of total flight experience with 4,317 of them on the Boeing 737.[7]
Accident
Cameroon Airlines Flight 3701 took off from Cadjehoun Airport in Cotonou, Benin, on a flight to Douala International Airport. The Boeing 737-200 had 71 passengers and five crew on board and after a one-hour flight was ready to land at Douala International Airport, but as the landing gear was lowered the nose gear light showed that it was not down. The pilots called air traffic control saying that they had landing gear problems and the crew elected to abort the approach. Some minutes later they tried a second approach but the pilots did not see that the engine two was operating at high power while the No. 1 engine was not developing power. Then the aircraft went into a steep dive and crashed 6 kilometres (3.7mi; 3.2nmi) short of the runway in a mangrove swamp. The aircraft burst into flames, killing 71 passengers and crew. Five people survived the accident.[1]
The accident report determined the cause of the loss of control and the loss of power to engine No. 1 to be the following:
The probable cause of the accident is a loss of control during a go-around attempt made during a maneuver to reach the runway with degraded performance
Seriously contributing to this:
The detachment by structural fatigue of a first stage compressor blade of the No. 1 engine which resulted in a loss of power and destabilization of the trajectory when landing
The late or slow execution of the go-around procedure with an unidentified single-engine configuration, leading to irreversible loss of speed.
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