What happened
A scheduled domestic service involving a flight from Cairo to Aswan, with stops in Luxor, experienced a serious incident during its final leg of the day. After completing several uneventful sectors, the aircraft prepared for departure from Luxor back to Cairo. At approximately 1130 hours, the aircraft moved onto the second taxiway leading to Runway 20 and received takeoff clearance.
Rather than performing a standard backtrack on the runway, the pilot initiated the takeoff roll from a position roughly 400 meters from the runway threshold. During this acceleration, at a speed of approximately 160 km/h, the crew observed a camel crossing the runway from east to west about 700 meters ahead of the aircraft. In an effort to prevent a direct impact, the pilot steered the aircraft slightly to the right and lifted off as quickly as possible.
Despite these maneuvers, the right landing gear made contact with the animal when the aircraft was roughly 2 meters above the ground. The force of the collision caused the right gear bracing to fail. Although the crew attempted to retract the landing gear, the right unit remained extended while the nose and left gears were stuck in the retracted position. To ensure safety, the pilot opted to proceed to Cairo Airport to utilize better ground support. At 1402 hours, the aircraft performed a belly landing on a sand strip adjacent to Runway 34 at Cairo. There were no injuries among the 43 occupants, but the aircraft was determined to be a total loss.
Findings
The incident was caused by the failure of both the flight crew and the air traffic controller to identify the animal on the runway in time to prevent the encounter. Furthermore, the evasive actions taken by the pilot were insufficient to avoid the impact.