World’s only civilian C-160 Transall destroyed

The world’s only civilian Transall C-160NG was destroyed in a crash on November 3, 2021, at Dolow airport in southern Somalia.

EY-560 (msn F-233) was operating a cargo flight from Mogadishu, reportedly carrying humanitarian supplies. After landing on the unpaved strip in Dolow, the 1985 vintage aircraft caught fire and burnt beyond repair. No fatalities were reported among the two crew members.

The aircraft, previously registered as TL-AAW in the Central African Republic, was owned by Flying Tiger Oversize Cargo from Australia (70%) and Kenya’s Wilken Group, the owner of Westwind Aviation (Kenya) (WWA, Nairobi Wilson). Newton Osiemo, the Director of Wilken Group, explained to ch-aviation that the ownership of the aircraft was subject to a court case in Kisumu, Kenya. The judges served an order prohibiting the transfer of the aircraft out of Kisumu until the dispute had been settled. However, on March 9, 2020, the aircraft was flown out of Kisumu. Wilken Group denied having any knowledge about the aircraft’s current ownership, registration, or operations.

Osiemo underlined that the Kenyan court had issued arrest warrants for two Flying Tiger Oversize Cargo directors and the pilots who flew the C-160NG out of Kisumu. The warrants remain in effect, he added.

Flying Tiger Oversize Cargo is a privately-owned company registered in New South Wales in 2010, company records show. It does not provide any contact details or information about its staff and shareholders publicly.

The Transall C-160 was developed in the 1960s as a military transport aircraft by a consortium of Germany’s Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, France’s Aérospatiale, and Germany’s VFW-Fokker. It remains in service with various air forces, mainly in Germany and France, where it is due to be replaced with A400Ms.