UTA Flight 772 of the French airline Union des Transports Aériens was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France.
On Tuesday, 19 September 1989 the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft registered N54629 took off from N'Djamena International Airport at 13:13. 46 minutes later, at its cruising altitude of 10,700 metres (35,100 ft), an explosion caused UTA Flight 772 to break up over the Sahara Desert near the towns of Bilma and Ténéré in Niger. All 156 passengers and 15 crew members died, including Bonnie Pugh, wife of the American ambassador to Chad, Robert L. Pugh.
Read more about UTA Flight 772: Victims, Investigation, Trial in Absentia, Libyan Compensation, Other Statements, Memorial
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)