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Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 was a passenger flight on 21 August 1994 which crashed approximately ten minutes after takeoff from
Agadir–Al Massira Airport Agadir – Al Massira Airport ( ar, مطار المسيرة, Matar al-Maseera; french: Aéroport Al Massira; ) is an international airport serving Agadir, a major city in southwest Morocco and the capital of Souss-Massa region. The airport is lo ...
. All 44 passengers and crew on board were killed. It was the deadliest ATR 42 aircraft crash at that point in time. A later investigation showed that the crash was deliberately caused by the pilot.


Aircraft and crew

The aircraft involved was an ATR 42-312 which had its maiden flight on 20 January 1989. The aircraft was delivered to Royal Air Maroc on 24 March the same year. The aircraft was powered by two
Pratt & Whitney Canada PW120 The Pratt & Whitney Canada PW100 aircraft engine family is a series of turboprops manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Canada. Pratt & Whitney Canada dominates the turboprops market with 89% of the turboprop regional airliner installed base in 2016, ...
turboprop A turboprop is a turbine engine that drives an aircraft propeller. A turboprop consists of an intake, reduction gearbox, compressor, combustor, turbine, and a propelling nozzle. Air enters the intake and is compressed by the compressor. ...
engines. The captain was 32-year-old Younes Khayati, who had 4,500 flight hours. The first officer was Sofia Figuigui.


Flight

Flight 630 was a scheduled flight from
Agadir, Morocco Agadir ( ar, أݣادير, ʾagādīr; shi, ⴰⴳⴰⴷⵉⵔ) is a major city in Morocco, on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean near the foot of the Atlas Mountains, just north of the point where the Souss River flows into the ocean, and south ...
to Casablanca using an ATR 42 aircraft. At approximately 10 minutes into the flight while climbing through , the aircraft entered a steep dive, and crashed into a region of the Atlas Mountains about north of Agadir. The crash site was at Douar Izounine, about north of Agadir. Among the 40 passengers on board were a Kuwaiti prince and his wife. The prince was the brother of
Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah ( ar, الشيخ صباح الأحمد الجابر الصباح, translit=ash-Shaykh Sabāh al-ʾAḥmad al-Jābir aṣ-Ṣabāḥ; 16 June 192929 September 2020) was the Emir of Kuwait and Commander of the Kuwai ...
, Kuwait's minister of defence. At least 20 of the passengers were non-Moroccans. This included eight Italians, five Frenchmen, four Dutch, two Kuwaitis, and one American.


Investigation

The commission that investigated the crash determined it to be pilot suicide. Flight recorder data revealed that the ATR 42's
autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator' ...
was intentionally disconnected by Captain Khayati, who then deliberately put the aircraft into a dive. Evidence also showed that during the descent, First Officer Figuigui had sent out distress calls once aware of the captain's intentions. The Moroccan pilots union disputed the suicide explanation, claiming that Captain Khayati was mentally fit and showed no signs of frustration, and instead claiming that Captain Khayati reported a "technical problem" prior to takeoff, although the investigative commission never found evidence supporting this claim. The crash was the deadliest incident involving an ATR 42 aircraft at that point in time.


See also

* Accidents and incidents involving the ATR 42 family *
Aviation safety Aviation safety is the study and practice of managing risks in aviation. This includes preventing aviation accidents and incidents through research, educating air travel personnel, passengers and the general public, as well as the design of airc ...
* *
List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft This list of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft includes notable events that have a corresponding Wikipedia article. Entries in this list involve passenger or cargo aircraft that are operating commercially and meet this list ...
* Trigana Air Service Flight 267, current deadliest aviation accident involving an ATR 42 *
Suicide by pilot Suicide by pilot is an aviation event in which a pilot deliberately crashes or attempts to crash an aircraft in a suicide attempt, sometimes to kill passengers on board or people on the ground. This is sometimes described as a murder–suic ...
;Specific incidents *
EgyptAir Flight 990 EgyptAir Flight 990 (MS990/MSR990) was a regularly scheduled flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Cairo International Airport, with a stop at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City. On October 31, 1999, the Boeing 767-3 ...
*
Germanwings Flight 9525 Germanwings Flight 9525 PDF of the English translation of the final report and thoriginal French version(which the BEA notes on PDF p. 2/110 of the English PDF is the primary work of reference) was a scheduled international passenger flight fr ...
*
Japan Airlines Flight 350 was a McDonnell Douglas DC-8-61, registered ''JA8061'', on a domestic scheduled passenger flight from Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, to Tokyo in Japan. The airplane crashed 9 February 1982 on approach to Haneda Airport in Tokyo Bay, resulting ...
*
LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Maputo, Mozambique, to Luanda, Angola. On 29 November 2013, the Embraer E190 twinjet operating the service crashed into the Bwabwata National Park in Namibia ...
*
SilkAir Flight 185 SilkAir Flight 185 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by a Boeing 737-300 from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia to Changi Airport in Singapore that crashed into the Musi River near Palembang, Sum ...


References


External links


A photo of the accident aircraft
{{Aviation accidents and incidents in 1994 Airliner accidents and incidents involving deliberate crashes 1994 in Morocco Accidents and incidents involving the ATR 42 Aviation accidents and incidents in 1994 Aviation accidents and incidents in Morocco Mass murder in 1994 Murder–suicides in Africa
630 Year 630 ( DCXXX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 630 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the ...
August 1994 events in Africa 1994 disasters in Morocco