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Pilots in 16-death crash jailed for praying instead of flying

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

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The pilot and co-pilot of Tuninter Flight 1153, which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in 2005, killing sixteen people, have each received ten-year jail sentences for the ditching of the flight. They were found to have prayed instead of trying to direct the plane to safety when the engines failed. Tuninter Flight 1153, from Bari, Italy, to Djerba, Tunisia, crashed into Italian waters on August 6, 2005.

A Tuninter ATR 72 similar to the one that crashed.
Image: Roberto Benetti.

The flight ran into trouble because the ATR 72 twin-engined turboprop had mistakenly been fitted with the fuel gauge for an ATR 42, which has a lower fuel capacity. The incorrect reading on the gauge was relied upon, and led to the aircraft suffering fuel starvation and eventually running out of fuel. The right engine failed at 23,000 feet, and the left at 7,000 feet.

Captain Shafik Al Gharbi and co-pilot Ali Kebaier Lassoued were described as having panicked and started praying aloud, rather than following emergency procedures to bring the plane safely to a runway. After gliding for sixteen minutes, the pilots decided to attempt a crash-landing in the Mediterranean, and the aircraft crashed into the sea about 23 nautical miles to the Northwest of Palermo.

The court in Palermo also sentenced five other employees of Tuninter to sentences of between eight and nine years' imprisonment. None of the accused were in court to hear the verdict, and none will serve time in jail before the appeals process is completed.


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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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