If you’re a nervous flier, you’d do well to avoid Luzamba airport in northern Angola¹. It’s not so much that lots of aircraft crash here (although it seems it’s hardly a rare occurence) — more the fact that the wrecked planes are simply left scattered around the place.

There are at least four: first up, at the northern end of the runway, an Air Angola Antonov An-26 which overshot the runway in February 1999, killing 2 of the 36 people on board. The International Civil Aviation Organization’s report suggests that the crew might have been drunk. There’s a ground-level photo of the wreckage on Panoramio².

At the other end of the airport, and seemingly in better shape, is a Transafrik L-100-30 Hercules (a civilan version of the C-130), which also overshot the runway later the same year. Happily, there were no casualties in this incident. Again, Panoramio features a ground-level photo, which reveals that the plane has been stripped of its engines and other salvageable parts.

In the trees to the east of the runway are another two crashed planes: one that looks almost as big as the Hercules, and another much smaller one about 50 metres away. Extensive research by Google Sightseeing (or a bit of Googling, at any rate) has failed to identify these planes, although there is a photo of one of them on Panoramio, too, and it looks as though it’s been lying there for some time. Can anyone identify it?

Lastly, it’s hard to tell from the aerial view, but could this be another piece of wreckage just on the other side of the runway from the last two planes?

Thanks to John.

Welcome to the first annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week!

The Namib Desert in Namibia and Angola forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, and covers an area of 50,000 km². This part of the world has experienced arid conditions for at least 55 million years, which makes the Namib Desert the oldest desert in the world.

The Namib covers much of the Atlantic Ocean coast of Namibia, where the collision of the water-laden sea air and the bone-dry desert air causes immense fogs and strong currents, making this place as notorious for ending the lives of sailors as the more famous Skeleton Coast to the north. There are plenty of shipwrecks to be found in this imagery for those that care to find them!

Away from the coast, this massive desert receives less than 10 mm of rain annually and is almost completely barren, apart from the spectacularly complex dune patterns.

In the eastern part of the desert we find the famous Sossusvlei salt pan, which can sometimes be seen filled with water when a flash-flood fills the Tsauchab river. Note the tourist buses parked in the shade of a tree.

To the south is the Dead Vlei salt pan where even from up here we can spot the “skeletons” of trees which are believed to be about 900 years old – scorched black by the sun and unable to decompose due to lack of moisture.

Perhaps most impressive of all the sights here though, are the mammoth dunes which surround the salt pans. Some of them rise up to 340 metres, which makes them the highest sand dunes in the world.

Check out the photos on Flickr of giant dunes, tree skeletons, and the dunes as seen from in the Dead Vlei.

See Wikipedia for more info on the Namib Desert, the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the Tsauchab, Sossusvlei and the Dead Vlei.