Irish citizen dies in crash
The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed a 42-year-old woman with Irish citizenship was on the passenger list.
Officials from the Irish Embassy in Rome, which handles diplomatic representation for Libya, travelled to the scene of the 6am crash at Tripoli International Airport.
Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin said his consular officials would remain in close contact with the authorities in Libya and arrangements were being made to inform the woman’s family. The woman’s identity was not being revealed until family were informed.
All of the passengers and crew died except one child when the Afriqiyah airline Airbus A330-200 plane, flying from Johannesburg, crashed on its approach to landing at Tripoli.
Speaking from the crash site, a senior Libyan government official said the child did not have life-threatening injuries and was being treated in hospital.
A doctor later reported the boy had been operated on for broken bones and was recovering well.
The plane’s black boxes were recovered from the extensive crash site. Libyan officials said an investigation into the cause of the disaster was under way and terrorism had been ruled out.
Afriqiyah Airways is not included on the European Union’s list of banned airlines. The list has nearly 300 carriers deemed by the EU not to meet international safety standards.
According to initial reports, the plane crashed as it neared the threshold of Tripoli International’s main east-west runway.
The main runway at Tripoli Airport is not equipped with an all-weather instrument landing system, but it does have two other systems that many other airports use worldwide – a high frequency directional radio system that pilots use to navigate their aircraft, and a non-directional beacon that also helps guide planes into the airport.
The weather at Tripoli’s international airport was good at the time of the crash, with three-mile visibility.
