Crash

It might not be terribly big news in the rest of the world, but last night a UPS cargo plane crashed just after take-off from Dubai airport. Here are some photos from the article on this web page. I was kind of shocked to hear about it initially last night. My first reaction was of the people aboard but thankfully, it was only a cargo plane. After, when I hear that it crashed on the Dubai expressway, my thoughts returned to the people on the ground. The initial reports were that it had hit the highway.Fortunately, this was a mistake as the pilot and co-pilot had the presence of mind to try to land on an unpopulated area.

According to a more recent article, the cockpit of the plane caught fire after take-off on its way to Germany. When the pilot notified someone on the ground and was instructed to return to the airport. While details are sketchy, it seems that the pilot then diverted the plane to a nearby military base in order to avoid casualties on the ground.

While the incident is a tragedy, we can be thankful that that even if the pilot was unable to land the plane safely, at least no one on the ground was killed. Hopefully, this incident will lead to more oversights to ensure incidents like this won't happen again.