Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Daily Star staff

Public Works and Transport Minister Najib Mikati implied in a press conference on Tuesday that Lebanon’s responsibility in Thursday’s plane crash in Benin was minimal.
The Boeing 727, which collided with a building in Cotonou Airport and crashed into the sea on Christmas Day, killing 85 Lebanese citizens, belonged to a Lebanese businessman and was operating under a Guinean license issued in the name of Union des Transports Africains (UTA). The French Embassy said in a statement Tuesday that the UTA was different than the Union des Transports Aeriens, which Air France bought in 1990.
“We want to clarify some misconceptions about the country’s Civil Aviation Authority and its conformity with international regulations,” Mikati said in the press conference, held in his office in Fayadiyeh.
Mikati handed reporters 16 documents, correspondence between the Guinean and the Lebanese Civil Aviation Authorities on the subject of allowing the UTA to establish a route to Beirut.
According to the minister, a treaty between Lebanon and Guinea regulated flights between the two countries, and the UTA was Guinea’s accredited national air carrier.
Mikati said that Guinea requested in July that Lebanon allow a Boeing 727 registered in Guinea under the license 3X-GDM to make flights to Beirut. “The airplane was inspected and denied permission to transport passengers to Beirut,” said Mikati.
UTA then requested permission for another Boeing 727, registered in Swaziland as 3D-FAK, to transport passengers instead. Again, after inspecting the airplane, the Civil Aviation Authority did not grant the new plane permission to carry passengers to Beirut.
On Aug. 12, Aboulaye Djibril Camara, head of Guinea’s Civil Aviation Authority, informed the Lebanese Civil Aviation Authority that “the technical deficiencies of the Boeing 727 3D-FAK were corrected,” save for two, which would be taken care of in Beirut.
Mikati said that on Aug. 25 Lebanon “inspected the plane and found it complied with all the technical requirements.” The minister, however, did not provide any document to support this claim.
On Sep. 15, Lebanon’s Civil Aviation Authority was cleared by the head of its Flight Safety Department, Toni Helou, to approve Guinea’s request that UTA undertake regular flights between Conakry and Beirut. According to documents released at the press conference, the airplane’s registration was moved from Swaziland to Guinea on Oct. 27.
“We present these facts to illuminate the reasons that led to the tragedy, and act in line with international procedures employed in such cases,” he said, referring to Lebanon’s likely future request for compensation.
The Transport Minister told reporters that a committee had been formed to “collect all documents and data relevant to the investigation, prepare a technical report on the accident, follow up on the issue with international authorities and suggest a legal mechanism to identify who was responsible for the crash.” The committee will be headed by the director of Civil Aviation, Hamdi Shawq, and will include pilot Ziad Baba, engineer Hatem Zebian and judge Sleiman Eid.
Mikati also said that Lebanese Foreign Ministry will ask the governments of Benin, Guinea and France to get involved in the investigation. “We will also ask the Cabinet to support the victims’ families and prepare a report on the damages resulting from the crash and compensation required.”
Meanwhile, Interpol told state prosecutor Adnan Addoum that information from the plane’s black box would not be available before experts in Cotonou finished analyzing it.
Interpol also told Addoum that the plane had traveled 2,400 meters on Cotonou’s Airport runway, but could not take off. The plane then hit a building, which caused it to become unstable and crash immediately afterward.
For their part, flight experts told The Daily Star that identifying the party responsible for the crash could not be done without gathering all the information on the accident and retrieving what was recorded on the black box. However, this did not mean that Lebanon did not bear some responsibility, the experts said, since Civil Aviation should have been stricter in enforcing safety measures on all planes arriving in and departing from Lebanon.
Mahmoud Houmani, president of the Lebanese Pilots’ Association, said that the open skies policy did not mean that Lebanon’s airspace should not be guarded. “Even if we have bilateral agreements with some countries, these countries cannot force us to receive their planes,” he said.
Houmani told The Daily Star in an interview that the Civil Aviation Authority should impose its terms on all airplanes. “Every country should control its airspace. What if an airplane explodes over Lebanon? Who would bear the responsibility then?”
He added that during the investigation, all factors should be taken into consideration, including the “reportedly high temperature in Cotonou on that day. We can’t blame overloading alone for the crash.”
Houmani added that the crash was most probably the result of a combination of technical failures.