Nairobi — As investigators try to unravel the cause of the Kenya Airways flight KQ 507 crash in Douala, Cameroon, last Saturday night, the mystery of the eleven minutes it was in air before it crashed is begging to be answered.

Briefing journalists at Panari Sky Hotel, Nairobi, on Saturday morning, Kenya Airways officials said the plane lost contact with the control tower immediately after take off.

The plane is said to have disappeared from the radar eleven minutes after take off.

At the speed of 290 km per hour, the aircraft would have been further away from the airport.

The plane's wreckage was recovered about 5.42 kilometres from Douala airport's runway.

Whats more, it took the Camerounian search and rescue team two days to recover the wreckage which was on the flight path of any aircraft flying into the airport.

In their initial announcement Kenya Airways said that flight KQ 507 operated by a 737-800 aircraft departed from Douala airport at 00:05 local time and was due to arrive in Nairobi at 06:15 but did not.

The search and rescue team had initially said that the plane disappeared 35 nautical miles between Douala and Yaunde. In one press briefing Kenya Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni said the search location was 100 km South West of Yaunde.

While initial investigations establish that the plane crashed immediately after take off, another school of thought suspects that the aircraft was attempting to fly back to the airport when it crashed.

The plane is reported to have disappeared between Eseka and Eboulo in Cameroon.

Emergency location

Its emergency location transmitter signal was picked up by a ship off the Canary Islands and reported to the Camerounian authorities.

Initially search teams had been deployed to areas between Yaunde and Douala but gradually the search narrowed down to 100 km, 70 km, 40 km and finally 20 km from Douala.

Mr Naikuni yesterday said the discrepancy in distance was because the airport was outside Douala town.

The airline's chief, who had just returned from the crash site, described it as very difficult, hot and humid area with soft mud swamp.

The KQ boss said that 81 remains had been recovered but it would be difficult to identify the bodies because they were in very bad condition.

He said that 96 families of the passengers had already been contacted and the airline had processed 59 travel approvals for them.

Meanwhile, American forensic and DNA experts have begun the identification process and the bodies would be released as soon as it is completed.