On Tuesday 1 March 1988, Comair Flight 206, an Embraer EMB-110P1 Bandeirante flying from Phalaborwa to Johannesburg
was approaching
Johannesburg International Airport
O. R. Tambo International Airport is an international airport situated in Kempton Park, Gauteng, South Africa. It serves as the primary airport for domestic and international travel to/from South Africa and since 2020, it is Africa's second ...
to land when it broke up in flight over
Germiston
Germiston, also known as kwaDukathole, is a small city in the East Rand region of Gauteng, South Africa, administratively forming part of the City of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality since the latter's establishment in 2000. It functions as ...
.
Reports indicated an explosive device on board; the cockpit was found a quarter of a kilometer away from the rest of the fuselage, despite the flight having been relatively low at the time of the accident. A miner on board had taken out a large life insurance policy shortly before the flight.
There were no survivors.
Comair continued to use the flight code on a different route between Durban and Johannesburg up until their financial collapse in 2022.
See also
*
Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by ''Clipper Maid of the Seas'', a Boeing ...
*
Federal Express Flight 705
On April 7, 1994, Federal Express Flight 705, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 cargo jet carrying electronics equipment across the United States from Memphis, Tennessee, to San Jose, California, was involved in a hijack attempt by Auburn R. Callowa ...
*
Continental Airlines Flight 11
Continental Airlines Flight 11, registration N70775, was a Boeing 707 aircraft which exploded in the vicinity of Centerville, Iowa, while en route from O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois, to Kansas City, Missouri, on May 22, 1962. The aircraft cr ...
*
National Airlines Flight 2511
National Airlines Flight 2511 was a United States domestic passenger flight from New York City to Miami, Florida. On January 6, 1960, the Douglas DC-6 serving the flight exploded in midair. The National Airlines aircraft was carrying 5 crew m ...
*
United Airlines Flight 629
United Air Lines Flight 629, registration N37559, was a Douglas DC-6B aircraft also known as "Mainliner Denver", that was blown up on November 1, 1955, by a dynamite bomb placed in the checked luggage. The explosion occurred over Longmont, Colo ...
*
Avianca Flight 203
Avianca Flight 203 was a Colombian domestic passenger flight from El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá to Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in Cali, Colombia. It was destroyed by a bomb over the municipality of Soacha on November ...
References
Aviation accidents and incidents in South Africa
Accidents and incidents involving the Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante
1988 in South Africa
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1988
Airliner bombings
Suicide bombings in Africa
{{SouthAfrica-airline-stub