Dubai, October 24: The Sudanese community in the UAE has echoed their government’s demand that US sanctions on the country be lifted to help maintain its outdated fleet of aircraft.
Blaming an acute shortage of spare parts in Sudan’s aviation sector for Wednesday’s cargo plane crash in Sharjah, they have also sought the intervention of international bodies, including the United Nations.
The cause of the crash is being investigated by a joint team from the civil aviation authorities of the UAE and Sudan. Vital data recorded in the plane’s black box will be decoded soon overseas.
All six people aboard the ill-fated Boeing 707 that nose-dived minutes after take-off from Sharjah Airport were burned to death.
It was sixth crash worldwide involving planes from Sudan in the past decade.
A number of Sudanese expatriates here feel that the root cause of the accidents stems from economic sanctions imposed by the United States. They say the country’s aviation industry has been hit by huge losses in purchasing spare parts for the planes.
Al Taieb.S, secretary-general of Sudanese Community Council in Dubai, said it was high time that the fundamental problem was addressed.
“We want an international intervention from the United Nations and other bodies to ensure that Sudan has easy access to spare parts of aircrafts,” Al Taieb told Khaleej Times .
Noting that this is not the first Sudanese Boeing crash, El Sadiq Mohammed Ahmed, a tourism official, said the Khartoum government had admitted that the Sudanese air fleet was ageing as it was unable to buy spare parts for its US-made aircraft due to Washington’s restrictions.
This disclosure had come in 2003 when a Sudan Airways Boeing 737 exploded in a ball of fire shortly after take-off from Port Sudan. The crash claimed 116 lives.
“That plane had not been serviced for five or six years due to lack of spare parts,” said Ahmed.
The US has banned American companies from supplying spare parts to aircrafts to prevent transport of arms to conflict-hit areas in Sudan.
“We hope that the US would lift sanctions on parts needed by civilians who have nothing to do with the conflicts with the US on the southern Sudan problem and Darfur issues,” Ahmed added.
S. Eldeen, a media officer who called upon international organisations, world leaders and human rights bodies to seriously look into the matter by asking the American aerospace industry to lift the trade embargo, also urged American citizens to extend their support for the cause, considering it a human rights issue.
“However, we should not leave out the fact that more technical inspections should have been done by the operator and the airports it was flying from and to,” he said of the Sharjah crash of the Boeing 707 made in 1972.
Following the death of 30 people after a Sudan Airways plane burst into flames last year, the Civil Aviation Authority had briefly grounded the national carrier for not maintaining international standards.
Pointing out the direct correlation between maintaining standards and maintenance work using genuine spare parts, Sudanese expatriates said that the goal of achieving high standards would not be achieved without the means to conduct proper maintenance of aircraft.