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Middle Eastern Airlines Flight 444 was a scheduled passenger flight on Friday, April 17 1964 from Beirut, Lebanon, to Dhahran, Saudia Arabia operated by a Sud Aviation Caravelle 3 aircraft which crashed into the sea on final approach into Dhahran during a sandstorm. The cause of the crash is unknown to this day. All 49 passengers and crew perished.[1]
On Friday, April 17 1964, a Middle Eastern Airlines flight departed Beirut International Airport (BEY/OLBA) at 17:32 UTC. The flight was operated by a Sud Aviation Caravelle 3 aeroplane registered as OD-AEM and was built in the 1960s. The aircraft climbed to its cruising altitude of FL300 (30,000 ft). The flight cruised just fine, and the aeroplane started to descend normally. The aircraft was in contact with ATC when passing 4000ft which it did successfully. At the time, a sandstorm over Dharan allowed the pilot only .5 miles of visibility. ATC requested the aircraft to report when the runway was in sight. The plane also successfully passed 2500 ft At approximately 19:32 UTC (22:32 local time), the tower heard a loud noise in their headsets but lost communication with the plane. OD-AEM was found to have crashed into the ocean roughly 10 nautical miles away from the airport.[2] The wing and a portion of the fuselage were found by a U.S. Navy Helicopter the next day. This was part of a huge ground-and-air search operation that started in the morning of Saturday.[3] The search has to be pushed to the next morning because of the extreme weather. There was also low visibility during the search. [4]
Air France did testing in their lab and found that the radio altimeter could have been affected by the sandstorm[5]
- ^ https://www.planecrashinfo.com/1964/1964-20.htm
- ^ "Accident Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle III OD-AEM, Friday 17 April 1964".
- ^ "Air Crash Obituaries (Part - 1)".
- ^ A Middle East Airlines Sud Aviation SE-210 Crashes in the Persian Gulf, April 17, 1964. Robert Grey Reynolds, Jr. 2016.
- ^ "Accident Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle III OD-AEM, Friday 17 April 1964".