“About 10 experts have already arrived in the Saudi capital,” said Goentgens, adding that another team of senior German officials and experts are on their way to Riyadh. “The Lufthansa officials are closely cooperating with Saudi officials, including the regulatory authorities,” he added.
Under international aviation regulations, the plane manufacturer and owner are entitled to take part in crash investigations. The Boeing MD-11, owned by Lufthansa Cargo, crashed on landing at King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) early Tuesday. It took Civil Defense officials three hours to contain the ensuing blaze.
The flight was en route from Frankfurt and scheduled to continue to Sharjah and Hong Kong. Wreckage was scattered all across the runway. Local aviation experts said they thought the crash was the result of a technical failure.
Goentgens, however, refused to say anything about the likely cause of the crash, adding that the plane had undergone strict checks before heading to Riyadh.
Referring to the aircraft’s safety records, he said the plane was delivered in 1993 and taken over by Lufthansa Cargo in 2004. “Up to the accident in Riyadh, it had logged 10,073 takeoffs and around 73,200 flying hours,” said Goentgens.
The freighter completed its last comprehensive maintenance check (C-Check) on June 22, 2009; an A-Check was carried out immediately prior to the flight to Riyadh, he said. He added that the pilot and co-pilot — one 39 and the other 29 — were in stable condition at a military hospital in Riyadh. “We are in touch with them,” he said.
Goentgens said Lufthansa Cargo operations have not been “affected by the crash and all our flights were on schedule as per our plan.”
In 2009, the airline transported around 1.5 million tons of freight. The company currently employs about 4,500 people worldwide. Lufthansa Cargo focuses on the airport-to-airport business.
The cargo carrier serves some 330 destinations in over 100 countries including Saudi Arabia with its own fleet of freighters, the belly capacities of Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines passenger aircraft, and an extensive road feeder service network.
The bulk of the cargo business is routed through Frankfurt airport. Lufthansa Cargo is a wholly owned Lufthansa subsidiary.
According to data from the Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety Network, the accident is the fourth landing-related crash and fifth hull loss involving an MD-11F since 1997 when a FedEx MD-11F cartwheeled after an unstable touchdown at Newark. That was followed by a Mandarin Airlines aircraft similarly flipping on landing at Hong Kong in 1999 and another FedEx-11F crashing at Tokyo’s Narita last year, killing two pilots.
