On November 29th, 2013, a LAM Mozambique Airlines Embraer 190 crashed in Namibia near the Bwabwata National Park in northern Namibia, halfway between its departure and scheduled arrival airport. All 29 passengers and six crew onboard were killed.
LAM flight TM470 was a scheduled service from Maputo to Luanda and was operated by an Embraer 190, registration C9-EMC, and named “Chaimite”. The aircraft was built in 2012 and entered service with LAM on November 17, 2012. The aircraft had logged 2,905 flight hours in 1877 flight cycles in total at the time of the accident.
Weather was reported to be poor at the time of the accident with heavy rainfalls in the vicinity of the flight path. It was the first fatal accident for the airline since 1970 and the deadliest for a Mozambican airline since the Mozambican presidential Tupolev Tu-134A-3 aircraft carrying President Samora Machel crashed in 1986.
According to reports, the aircraft was cruising at an altitude of 38,000 feet over Botswanan airspace about halfway between Maputo and Luanda when it began to lose altitude abruptly. The aircraft descended rapidly at a rate of about 100 feet per second and was being tracked on radar. The aircraft’s track was lost at 3,000 feet above sea level, the last contact with air traffic control was made at 13:30 CAT over northern Namibia during heavy rainfall.
The investigation of the accident is ongoing.
