Passenger view of the ERJ145 crash landing at Kolwezi

Posted by slopit12@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 239 comments

This video taken by a passenger onboard the ERJ145 as crash landed at Kolwezi. Praise the camerman! Yes, the video was a little shaky at times, but they kept their camera focused on the action surprisingly well given their aircraft was in the process of crashing.

In seriousness though, the video seems to show the ERJ in a stable approach to the runway. It then passes over the runway threshold, which looks freshly surfaced. It floats for several seconds as the tarmac ends and is replaced by a dirt, rock and rubble - clearly the section of runway under construction. It then touches down in or right at the end of this section before scraping on its belly down what seems to be another tarmac section.

So it seems likely the section of the runway under construction was somewhere in the middle of the runway rather than at one end. Perhaps the pilots new about this and tried to plant the aircraft down right at the start of the remaining 1500m LDA and missed, or they didn't know and realised too late with too little energy to avoid contacting the section under construction.