2015 Senegal mid-air collision
CEIBA Intercontinental Boeing 737-8FB and Senegalair Hawker Siddeley HS-125-700A · Mid-air collision
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA15WA188
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Final · BEA Sénégal final report, 1 Aug 2017
- Event fatalities
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 119
- Survivors
- 112
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Aircraft 1 · Boeing 737-8FB
- Flight
- C271
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- 3C-LLY
- Operator
- CEIBA Intercontinental
- Onboard fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 112
- Survivors
- 112
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Not stated
- Route
- From Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport (DKR)To Malabo International Airport (SSG)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Aircraft 2 · Hawker Siddeley HS-125-700A
- Aircraft type
- Hawker Siddeley HS-125
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- 6V-AIM
- Operator
- Senegalair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 7
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- None · no survivors
- Route
- From Ouagadougou Thomas Sankara International Airport (OUA)To Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport (DKR)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
On 5 September 2015, CEIBA Intercontinental Flight 071, a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet en route from Dakar, Senegal, to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, collided mid-air with a Hawker Siddeley HS-125 air ambulance jet operated by Senegalair. The 737 was slightly damaged and managed to land safely at Malabo, but the HS-125, after remaining airborne for almost an hour with the crew unresponsive, eventually crashed into the ocean, killing all seven people on board.
Accident
The two aircraft collided at 18:13 approximately 130 km east of Tambacounda, Senegal, while cruising at an altitude of 35000 ft along the same airway in opposite directions, in an area with no radar coverage. The impact sheared off the top 1 m section of the Boeing's right winglet and was registered on the on-board flight data recorder as a brief oscillation and an uncommanded yaw promptly corrected by the autopilot.
It is believed that air ambulance 6V-AIM was struck on the fuselage, resulting in the loss of cabin pressure and the incapacitation of the crew. The HS-125 continued flying for a further 55 minutes without the crew responding to any of the several attempts made to contact them. It flew past Dakar, its intended destination, before presumably running out of fuel and crashing into the Atlantic Ocean around 110 km west of Dakar. The wreckage was not recovered.
The crew of the CEIBA 737 in the meantime had assessed that their aircraft was operating normally, and decided to skip the scheduled stopover at Cotonou, Benin, and instead continue directly to Malabo (the airline's operating base), where it landed without further incident.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
In August 2017, the Senegalese Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA Sénégal) released a final report stating that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the HS-125 crew to maintain the assigned flight level, which the crew had correctly acknowledged and read back to the air traffic control.
The report also noted that there had been previous incidents involving 6V-AIM in which a significant discrepancy was registered between the altitude indicated by the plane's altimeters and transponder, suggesting a possible fault in the aircraft's pitot-static system that may also have contributed to the accident. The report also lists as a possible contributing factor a failure by Senegalair's crew and maintenance staff to comply with established procedures, mentioning several previous detected instances.
Both aircraft were equipped with TCAS collision avoidance system, and the CEIBA 737's unit was subsequently analysed and found to be working correctly. Despite this, the CEIBA crew received no TCAS warnings prior to the collision, a circumstance that according to the report could have been the result of the HS-125's instrument failure and resulting discrepancy between the altitude information shown on the altimeter and the one fed to the transponder and TCAS systems.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2015 Senegal mid-air collision” (revision 1365837607, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
Sources
Wikipedia article: 2015 Senegal mid-air collision
- Revision
- 1365837607 · 2026-07-24 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q21608838
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA15WA188
- Event ID
- 20150921X31350
- Case number
- DCA15WA188
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "2015 Senegal mid-air collision" (page 48161519, revision 1365837607); merged with NTSB case DCA15WA188 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date; matches the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA Sénégal), Ministère du Tourisme et des Transports Aériens, Senegal final report
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA15WA188
- Operation
- airline flight number in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: total_fatalities; matches the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA Sénégal), Ministère du Tourisme et des Transports Aériens, Senegal final report
- Ground fatalities
- Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA Sénégal), Ministère du Tourisme et des Transports Aériens, Senegal final report
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2015 Senegal mid-air collision" and NTSB case DCA15WA188, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- Checked against the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile (BEA Sénégal), Ministère du Tourisme et des Transports Aériens, Senegal final report (2017-08-01) on 2026-09-18. The report states the same date, flight number, fatalities, registration (aircraft 1), operator (aircraft 1), departure (aircraft 1), destination (aircraft 1), damage (aircraft 1), registration (aircraft 2), operator (aircraft 2), departure (aircraft 2), destination (aircraft 2) and damage (aircraft 2). Taken from the report: ground fatalities. Not checked: place, crash-site coordinates, aircraft type and type of operation.