Massamba air crash
Bako Air Boeing 737 · Collision with terrain
From Brazzaville to Harare
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA09WA060
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 737
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- TL-ADM
- Operator
- Bako Air
- Onboard fatalities
- 7
- Route
- From BrazzavilleTo Harare
- 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., Non-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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Massamba air crash – happened on 29 April 2009 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A Boeing 737 crashed moments after taking off from the airport in Brazzaville. 7 people were killed.
Course of the flight
The aircraft was flying from Bangui to Harare, with a stopover in Brazzaville. In Harare, it was to undergo maintenance. The aircraft took off from Brazzaville. After a few minutes of flight, the aircraft struck the ground. 7 people were killed. The aircraft fell in Massamba, in Bandundu province. The causes are unknown. It is not known who the owner of the aircraft was. According to some sources, the crashed aircraft was a Boeing 737 belonging to Centrafrique.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Polish Wikipedia article “Katastrofa lotnicza w Massamba” (revision 75528440, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
On April 29, 2009, about 0800 UTC, TL-ADM, a Boeing 737-200, operated by Bako Air of the Central African Republic, a ferry flight, crashed at the locality of Massamba, District of Kwilu, province of Bandundu, Democratic Republic of Congo. All seven occupants were fatally injured and the airplane was destroyed. The departure point was Brazzaville, Republic of Congo and the destination was Harare, Zimbabwe.
The investigation is being conducted by the Ministry of Transport and Communication. The US NTSB has designated an Accredited Representative to support the investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Polish Wikipedia article: Katastrofa lotnicza w Massamba
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 75528440 · 2024-12-12 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q11737201
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA09WA060
- Event ID
- 20090628X42219
- Case number
- DCA09WA060
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- pl Wikipedia article "Katastrofa lotnicza w Massamba" (page 1719884, revision 75528440), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA09WA060 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA09WA060
- 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 DCA09WA060
- Operation
- not stated in the Wikipedia article's infobox or opening paragraph
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Massamba air crash" and NTSB case DCA09WA060, 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.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The narrative states "The departure point was Brazzaville, Republic of Congo"; FCBB is Brazzaville's airport code.