Qualla: Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druifkes, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ruben van Assouw was nine years old when he woke up in a Libyan hospital with fractures across his body and no memory of why he was there. His parents were dead. His brother was dead. So were 99 other people aboard Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, which had crashed at 6:01 a.m. on May 12, 2010, while on final approach to Tripoli International Airport. The Airbus A330-200, arriving from Johannesburg after a long overnight flight, struck the ground roughly 1,200 meters short of Runway 09. Ruben was the sole survivor -- the only person pulled alive from the wreckage of what became the deadliest aviation disaster in Libya since 1992.

Image: Druifkes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771: A Long Night's Final Minutes

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druifkes, CC BY-SA 3.0. Flight 771 departed O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg as a routine overnight service. At the controls sat First Officer Tareq Abu-Shawashi, 42, handling the flying duties, while Captain Yousef al-Saadi, 57, monitored from the left seat. A relief first officer, Naze...

Image: Druifkes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771: The Black Hole

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druifkes, CC BY-SA 3.0. The approach to Tripoli's Runway 09 was a non-precision procedure, meaning the pilots received lateral guidance from ground beacons but no vertical glideslope information to manage their descent. In the pre-dawn darkness over the Libyan coast, with few ground lights to provide sp...

Image: Druifkes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771: Grief Across Continents

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druifkes, CC BY-SA 3.0. The crash touched communities from Tilburg to Johannesburg to Tripoli. Among the dead were novelist Bree O'Mara from Ireland, Dutch singer Joelle van Noppen of the group WOW!, and Frans Dreyer, brother of South African MP Anchen Dreyer. The Dutch government established a crisis t...

Image: Druifkes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771: The Boy Who Survived

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druifkes, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ruben van Assouw had been returning from a family safari in South Africa with his parents and older brother. He was found in the wreckage with serious injuries but nothing life-threatening. While still recovering at Al-Khadhra Hospital in Tripoli, he was contacted by phone by a j...

Image: Druifkes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771: What the Wreckage Revealed

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Druifkes, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Libyan Civil Aviation Authority led the investigation, assisted by France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis and advisors from Airbus and the Dutch Safety Board. The flight data recorder, recovered and sent to Paris, showed no evidence of mechanical failure, fuel shortage, or c...

Image: Druifkes | CC BY-SA 3.0