On 5 May 2007, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft serving the flight crashed immediately after takeoff from Douala International Airport in Cameroon, killing all 114 occupants onboard.

[1][2][3] The plane broke up into small pieces and came to rest mostly submerged in a mangrove swamp, 5.4 kilometres (3.4 mi; 2.9 nmi) to the south (176°) of the end of Douala International Airport's runway 12.

[4][6][7] The investigation by the Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority determined that the pilots failed to notice and correct excessive bank following takeoff.

The captain may have panicked at the sound of the banking angle warning, as he made a series of movements on the control wheel which only aggravated the situation.

[13]: 48  The captain, on noticing this, engaged the autopilot, but by then the plane was banked at nearly 115° to the right at 2,290 ft (700 m) altitude and was in an unrecoverable situation.

[13][18] Kenya Airways set up a crisis management center at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.

[18][19] The wreckage was discovered on 6 May in a swamp, some 20 kilometres (12 mi; 11 nmi) southeast of Douala, submerged under mud and water.

[13]: 15  Furthermore, Kenya Airways Group managing director Titus Naikuni said in Nairobi that local people had led rescuers to the crash site.

[15] Cameroon's Minister of State for Territorial Administration Hamidou Yaya Marafa told a news conference that day, "All I can say for now is that the wreckage of the plane has been located in the small village of Mbanga Pongo, in the Douala III subdivision.

[32] Early attention as to the cause of the crash centred on the possibility of dual engine flameout during heavy weather.

[13]: 30 [38][39] The Cameroon Civil Aviation Authority (CCAA) released its final report on the crash on 28 April 2010.

[13] During captain Wamwea's upgrade training, his instructors recorded the following deficiencies: crew resource management skills, adherence to standard operating procedures, cockpit scan, and situational awareness.

[13]: 54–55 First officer Kiuru had also failed an instrument flight rules (IFR) and a radiotelephony (R/T) test and had to retake both of them.

[13]: 55 The CCAA determined the probable causes of the crash to be "loss of control of the aircraft as a result of spatial disorientation (non recognized or subtle type transitioning to recognized spatial disorientation) after a long slow roll, during which no instrument scanning was done, and in the absence of external visual references in a dark night.

Inadequate operational control, lack of crew coordination, coupled with the non-adherence to procedures of flight monitoring, confusion in the utilization of the autopilot, have also contributed to cause this situation.