Air France A330 attacked in Congo

Real World Aviation
#1

An Air France A330 has been reported to have been damaged after being shot at after landing at the main airport in Pointe-Noire, the assailant being a senior official. The aircraft, an A330 reg F-GZCK had landed in the evening of April 11th in order to evacuate French nationals with departure time scheduled for 10:00 am the following morning.

Air France reported that a replacement aircraft with crew(including a tech crew) was sent and that the flight would be delayed by 24h(obviously). The local Air France team managed to take care of the pax accommodation. It is still unclear what actions have been taken against the assailant(s). Gladly, none of the occupants were injured.

Tip of the hat to Sam Chui.

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Sections of the damaged parts of the fuselage.

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Bullet casings and gun clips beside the aircraft.

Please keep the comments as civil as possible.

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#2

Oh that is not good! Thank goodness it wasn’t a big amount of damage!

#3

If you read the #real-world-aviation it says: Aviation Incidents

As it is an unfortunate truth that there are many small aviation incidences on a daily basis. We ask that you refrain from posting about these on the forum. This is due to the volume of topics we would otherwise get that would clog up the forum and dilute productive discussion of other topics.

Anyways that’s really bad! Hope everyone is okay 🤗

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#4

I’m just glad that no one got hurt. In 2000, a Sabena A330 was similarly attacked while landing at Bujumbura with 2 occupants suffering injuries.

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#5

I think we can all agree on that this is a bit out of the ordinary “Cessna got a flat tire” reporting.

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#6

Insane story!

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#7

Yeah it’s out of the ordinary! Was going by the rules mybad 🙂

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#8

It’s Congo. What do you expect? While it is sad to see a plane damaged I’m not surprised that this happened in Congo as there are a lot of political and violence problems there.

#9

As much as Congo has its problems, for it to happen at a major airport which receives quite a bit of international traffic is just insane/bizarre.

#10

Similar accident a few months back involving a Xian MA-60 in Cameroon.

The bullets got pretty close in this case.

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#11

I flew that exact aircraft last year!

I even made my first trip report! (here it is)

darn!

This feels very strange!

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#12

I do not think that this is just a small incident. I think the rules;(as a mod could maybe back me up), only apply to small, light, GA aircraft. I don’t see any reason why this thread can’t stay open.

#13

They confirmed that this was okay

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#14

This is crazy on so many levels, but at the same time where the plane is at, doesn’t surprise me. Glad nobody was hurt. Hope Air France or any airline for that doesn’t go back any time soon…

#16

Not really. You can shoot a fuel tank all day, but if the bullet is smaller than a 12.7mm (.50 cal) it won’t do much, because there’s so much fuel that it drowns out the tiny little explosion before it gets bigger.

#17

So imagine your about to get on a flight, and they tell you the planes been shot. So now you want to get out of there ASAP probably, but no, they very reason you want to leave means you can’t. You have to sit there for 24 hours in the airport hotel thinking about the fact that your plane just a few hundred yards perhaps a few miles at most away has just been shot. That is a class A bad day…

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#18

Passengers must have been confused. Thank goodness everyone was okay.

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#19
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#20

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