Air Algérie Flight 5017 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to Algiers, Algeria, which crashed near Gossi, Mali, on 24 July 2014. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 twinjet, operated by Spanish charter airline Swiftair for Air Algérie, disappeared from radar about fifty minutes after take-off. All 110 passengers and 6 crew members on board died.
The Malian authorities, assisted by the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), published an investigation report in April 2016, concluding that, while the aircraft was cruising on autopilot, ice accretion on the engines caused a reduction of thrust that led to a high-altitude stall. The crew never tried to recover from the stall, and the aircraft crashed. The BEA issued several recommendations to Air Algérie, the US Federal Aviation Administration, and the Governments of Burkina Faso and Mali. Until final number of fatalities is confirmed for the 2023 Il-76 crash in Gao, the crash of Flight 5017 remains the deadliest accident in Malian aviation history. On the legal front, Swiftair was brought to trial before the Paris Criminal Court on 9 March 2026, nearly twelve years after the crash, on charges of involuntary manslaughter.
Accident
Flight 5017 departed from Ouagadougou Airport at 1:15 local time (UTC) on 24 July 2014. It was scheduled to land at Houari Boumediene Airport, Algiers, at 5:10 local time (4:10 UTC).
The aircraft reached cruise altitude, flight level 310 (31,000 feet (9,400 m)), 22 minutes after departure and attained its target speed of 280 knots (520 km/h; 320 mph) (IAS). About two minutes later, it began to gradually lose speed, and, though the speed did eventually drop to 200 knots (370 km/h; 230 mph), the aircraft maintained FL310. After an unspecified length of time had passed, the aircraft began to descend, and the speed dropped to about 160 knots (300 km/h; 180 mph). Afterwards, the aircraft entered a left-hand turn and began to lose altitude more rapidly, thus spiralling down. The flight data recording stopped at 1:47; at the time, the aircraft was at an altitude of 1,600 feet (490 m) and a speed of 380 knots (700 km/h; 440 mph). It crashed into the ground at 270 metres (890 ft) above sea level about a second later.
On 28 July, it was revealed that the flight crew had asked to return to Burkina Faso, after first requesting to deviate from course because of bad weather. There was a mesoscale convective system in the area at the time, and the aircraft had deviated to the left of its course to avoid it. Satellite images apparently identifying the light flare from the aircraft impact at the margins of the thunderstorm were captured.
Initially there were conflicting reports of the location of the crash. The aircraft's flight route took it over Mali, and it was reported to have disappeared between Gao and Tessalit. French forces reported detecting wreckage of the aircraft in an area between Gao and Kidal, in a desert region that is difficult to access. France sent a military unit to secure the wreckage of the Air Algérie plane. Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta said wreckage had been found in the country's northern desert, between Aguelhok and Kidal. There were also reports of wreckage being found near the town of Tilemsi in Mali, with officials from Algeria, Burkina Faso, and France having issued conflicting details.
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, MSN 53190, line number 2148. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines and first flew in June 1996 and was 18 years old at the time of the accident.
The aircraft was acquired by Swiftair, a charter flight operator, and re-registered EC-LTV in 2012 after being used by several airlines such as Flash Airlines and Avianca since it was delivered in 1996. It was wet-leased to Air Algérie in June 2014 to provide additional capacity during the summer 2014 season.
At the time of its loss, EC-LTV had flown 32,000 cycles. The director of the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) of France, Patrick Gandil, said the plane had been checked in France "two or three days ago" and that it was "in good condition".
Passengers and crew
There were 110 passengers on the plane; of those, 52 were French citizens, at least 33 of whom were French military personnel serving in Africa including three senior intelligence officials. A senior Hezbollah leader who had been posing as a businessman in Senegal and Burkina Faso was also on board. Others came from Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Algeria, Spain, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg. An Air Algérie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference that all passengers were in transit to Europe, the Middle East, or Canada. The number of persons holding multiple citizenship onboard was apparently high. The Lebanese embassy in Abidjan estimated the number of Lebanese citizens on the flight, some of whom had dual nationality, was at least 20. One Chilean had French nationality. There was initial uncertainty about the exact number of French citizens and number of passengers on board.
On 25 July, French President François Hollande stated that there were no survivors. All of the victims had been identified by 19 November, nearly 4 months after the accident.
The crew members of Flight 5017 were Captain Agustín Comerón Mogio (47), First Officer Isabel Gost Caimari (42), and four flight attendants; all six were Spanish.
Captain Comerón had accumulated a total flying experience of 12,988 flying hours, including 8,689 as a captain, in which 10,007 flying hours were on the type. From 1989 to 1994, he became a co-pilot on a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 with Centennial. From 1997 to 2012, he became a co-pilot, and subsequently promoted to a captain on an MD-80 in Spanair. He finally joined Swiftair as a captain on an MD-80. He also had served for the UN mission in Africa based in Khartoum, Sudan. He had flown an aircraft to various places in Africa including to Ouagadougou. From the start of his operations with Air Algerie on 20 June 2014, Captain Comerón had carried out 45 flights and 100 flying hours.
First Officer Gost had accumulated a total flying experience of 7,016 flying hours including 6,180 flying hours as a co-pilot on MD-80. Since 20 June 2014, date of the start of operations with Air Algerie, First Officer Gost had carried out 43 flights and 93 flying hours. From 1995 to 1998, she became a dispatcher at Spanair; From 1998 to 2012, as a co-pilot on an MD-80 in Spanair, and on 1 June 2013 she joined Swiftair S.A. as a co-pilot on an MD-80. Between 1998 and 2012, as a co-pilot with Spanair, she had flown to various aerodromes in Africa, including the one at Ouagadougou.
Aftermath
Search effort
The wreckage was found southeast of Gossi, Mali, and United Nations personnel moved to secure the crash site on 25 July. French television showed images of the wreckage site taken by a soldier from Burkina Faso. The brief footage showed a desolate area with scattered debris that was unrecognizable. There were bits of twisted metal but no identifiable parts such as the fuselage or tail, or victims' bodies. Scrubby vegetation could be seen scattered in the background. A French Reaper drone based in Niger spotted the wreckage after getting alerts from Burkina Faso and Malian soldiers. French soldiers were the first to reach the site. Burkina Faso's prime minister, Luc Adolphe Tiao, reviewed videos of the wreckage site and said that identifying the victims would be challenging.
Reactions
Because most of those on board were French citizens, France declared three days of national mourning following the crash. Flags flew at half mast on every public building from 28 July for three days. Algeria also declared a three-day mourning period.
Burkina Faso also began two days of mourning over the crash which killed 28 Burkina Faso citizens. During the mourning period, flags in Burkina Faso flew at half mast while all public celebrations were cancelled. The Burkinabé Minister for National Security assured the families of victims that the government would do all it can to shed light on the circumstances leading to the crash.
During October 2014, Air Algerie officially retired flight numbers AH5016 and AH5017 to honor the lives of those lost in the crash. On 24 July 2015, one year after the crash, a vigil and memorial to the victims was held in Ouagadougou. Relatives of the crash laid flowers and candles at a cemetery, and it was stated that the remains of unidentified victims of the crash would be buried in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
Investigation
The Malian authorities opened an investigation, with the President of the Mali Commission of Inquiry (French: Président de la Commission d'enquête du Mali) as the director, and the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) provided technical assistance.
On 27 July, BEA investigators arrived at the crash site to collect evidence. Both black boxes were recovered, and data from the flight data recorder (FDR) was read out. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) had been damaged in the impact and repaired, but "the magnetic tape recordings were unusable, apparently due to a recorder malfunction, with no link to accident damage. As a result, the investigation prioritized alternative sources, like records of air-traffic transmissions.
On 7 August, the investigation team held a press conference at BEA's headquarters in Paris. They outlined the team structure (three international working groups assigned to the "aircraft", "systems" and "operations" each) and presented an abridged timeline and a reconstruction of the aircraft's flight path. An interim report was scheduled to be published mid-September. Following the conference, Gérard Feldzer, an aviation expert, told BFMTV that the aircraft trajectory recorded by the FDR strongly suggested the plane had stalled in bad weather.
On 20 September, the BEA released an interim report into the crash. The report contained data extracted from the FDR, as well as an explanation why the CVR was mostly unusable: the CVR did record cockpit noises and conversations on the tape, but without erasing the existing content, the record was an mix of numerous hours of recording on a 32-minute tape. Parts of the radio exchanges with ATC could be made out, but it is not known whether the remainder of the cockpit conversations, for which no external recording exists, will be able to be determined.
On 2 April 2015, the BEA announced that a consensus had emerged that erratic and erroneous values of the engine pressure ratio (EPR) appeared for both engines two to three minutes after levelling off at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,400 m). The EPR is the main parameter for engine power management, and is derived from pressure sensors at the engine inlets. The sensors had probably become clogged with ice. Icing is normally prevented by a hot-air anti-ice, which was not activated by the aircrew during climb and cruise, according to BEA "analysis of the available data". The faulty EPR values caused the engine controllers to limit the thrust to much less than required to maintain sufficient airspeed at that altitude. The autopilot maintained altitude by increasing the angle of attack until a stall occurred. Twenty seconds after the initial stall, the plane suddenly rolled sharply left to almost full inversion as the autopilot disengaged, and pitched nose down to near vertical. The BEA notes that "the recorded parameters indicate that there were no stall recovery manoeuvres by the crew", the flight control surface deflections remained those that would normally intend nose-up and right-roll. The BEA noted two previous similar incidents involving MD-82 and MD-83 aircraft, where the aircrews were alert enough to notice the loss of airspeed and intervene before loss of control. The first one was Spirit Airlines Flight 970. The aircraft involved, registered as N823NK, was an MD-82 flying at noon in June 2002 when it suffered a loss of thrust on both engines, in cruise at an altitude of 33,000 feet (10,000 m). The two pressure sensors, located on the engine nose bullets, were blocked by ice crystals, leading to incorrect indications and over-estimation of the EPR. The crew noticed the drop in speed and precursor indications of a stall just before disengagement of the autopilot and put the aeroplane into a descent. They had not activated the engine anti-ice systems. The second one involved was an MD-83 operated by Swiftair that occurred in June 2014. The crew was aware of the drop in airspeed and successfully recovered.