Investigation Summary
Sebha, in the Fezzan region of south-western Libya, was the rear base for Libyan operations along the Chadian border. In the summer and autumn of 1987 that border was moving: Chadian forces had pushed into the Aouzou Strip, and Libyan transport aircraft were flying personnel and equipment out of forward strips under intermittent shelling. The Il-76M is the military variant of the type, pressurised cargo hold, four Soloviev D-30KP turbofans, and on these shuttles it was carrying people rather than freight. The aircraft was inbound to Sebha with ten crew and thirty-seven passengers aboard. Visibility at the destination was poor. On final approach the aircraft descended into open ground roughly 13 km south of the runway and was destroyed. Ten crew and thirty-six passengers died. A single passenger survived; contemporary accounts describe him as having been seated on the bed of a truck loaded in the hold, which is itself an indication of how the aircraft was being used. The published accounts agree on the mechanism and are thin on everything else. Both the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives and the ASN WikiBase entry for this airframe series state that the altimeter was not set correctly, ASN adding that the departure was hurried because the strip was under shelling. An altimeter left on a subscale setting that does not match the destination pressure reads high: the crew fly what the instrument shows as a safe altitude while the aircraft is in fact lower, and in poor visibility there is nothing outside to contradict it. Sebha sits at roughly 440 m elevation on featureless desert terrain. There was no published investigation. Libya was under sanction and the flight was military, so no accident report, flight recorder readout or wreckage survey has ever entered the public record. What follows from that is stated as attribution, not as finding: the cause given here is what the accident databases record, not what an investigating authority concluded.
Final Conclusions
No state investigating authority published a report, and none is known to exist. The consistent account in the accident databases is that the crew flew an approach on an incorrect altimeter setting in poor visibility and struck terrain short of the runway, a controlled-flight-into-terrain outcome with an operational-pressure element behind it: an evacuation shuttle leaving a forward strip under fire, with the setting never corrected for the destination. This should be read as the record of two independent archives rather than as an investigative finding.
Video Analysis
No video analysis linked for this case file yet.
Systems & Failure Modes
Altimeter subscale setting
A barometric altimeter reads height above whatever pressure datum the crew dials into it. Set to a pressure higher than the actual pressure at the destination, it over-reads: the aircraft is lower than the instrument shows. In poor visibility there is no outside reference to catch the error, so an approach can be flown into the ground while the instruments look normal.
Ilyushin Il-76M
The military transport variant of the Il-76, four Soloviev D-30KP turbofans, built for unpaved strips and rough-field operation. It carries freight, and on military evacuation flights people alongside it, which is why occupant counts on such flights bear little relation to any seating configuration.
Interesting Facts
- 01The sole survivor is reported to have been riding on the bed of a truck loaded in the cargo hold, an indication that the aircraft was flying an evacuation shuttle rather than a normal passenger movement.
- 02Ten crew were aboard a type normally flown by five to seven; the crew list includes two pilots, a copilot, two navigators, three reserve crew and an intelligence officer.
- 03It is the deadliest accident recorded at Sebha in the BAAA archive, and the deadliest Libyan Air Force accident it lists.
- 04The crash site was not documented in any accident database until independent researcher u/vladimirsGs (Reddit) spotted the wreckage field on satellite imagery and reconstructed the event from archive material. The coordinates on this page come from that visible debris field roughly 13 km south of Sebha, which is why they are recorded as a confirmed site rather than an estimate.
Known Controversies & Unanswered Questions
The two archives disagree on the date and the airframe
Reference ↗The Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives dates this crash 16 November 1987 and gives the registration 5A-DLL. The ASN WikiBase carries the same narrative, the hurried departure under shelling and the incorrect altimeter setting, against 8 August 1987 and the registration 5A-DKK (MSN 0003423675). ASN separately records 5A-DLL as destroyed on the ground at Tripoli on 15 April 1986 during the US strike Operation Eldorado Canyon, which if correct rules that registration out for a 1987 crash. The date and registration here follow the BAAA entry because it is the only source carrying the casualty figures and crew list; the airframe identity should be treated as unresolved.
No investigation report exists
The flight was military and Libya published no accident report. There is no known flight recorder readout, wreckage survey or official probable cause. The altimeter explanation is what the databases record; it has never been confirmed by an investigating authority.
Location
ACCIDENT SITE · Coordinates taken from the entered by an editor.