AIR CRASH INVESTIGATIONS, GROSS NEGLIGENCE KILLS 151, The Crash of Union des Transports Aeriens de Guinee Flight GHI 141

On 25 December 2003, Union des Transport Aériens de Guinée Flight GIH 141, a Boeing 727-223, on a flight from Conakry (Guinea) to Kufra (Libya), Beirut (Lebanon) and Dubai (United Arab Emirates) stopped over at Cotonou, Republic of Benin. During takeoff the overloaded airplane, was not able to climb properly and struck an airport building on the extended runway centerline, and crashed onto the beach and ended up in the ocean, killing 151 of the 163 people on board. The cause of the accident was the difficulty for the flight crew to rotate with an overloaded airplane with an unknown center of gravity. This in combination with the facts that the operator of the airline lacked any competence regarding organization and regulatory documentation, which made it impossible to correctly load and check the loading of the airplane, and the inadequacy of the supervision exercised by the Guinean civil aviation authorities in the context of safety oversight.