2014 — Remembering Flight 5017

On July 24, 2014, a routine flight became a tragedy in the Sahel skies. Air Algérie Flight 5017, flying from Ouagadougou to Algiers, lost contact just forty minutes after takeoff. All 116 people aboard, from fourteen countries, were lost when the plane went down in the Gossi region of Mali.

The crash came during a heavy storm. Investigators found that the pilots had failed to activate the de-icing system in the storm clouds, and the plane stalled from 31,000 feet. The disaster shook West Africa deeply, and it led to tighter aviation safety rules across the whole region in its wake.