What happened
On the night of May 4, 2007, a Boeing 737-800, registered as 5Y-KYA, was performing a scheduled flight from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to Nairobi, Kenya, with a planned stop in Douala, Cameroon. During the departure from Douala International Airport under stormy weather conditions, the aircraft began its climb into the night.
While ascending through 1,000 feet, the pilot flying momentarily released the flight controls for approximately 55 seconds without the autopilot being active. During this period, the aircraft began a gradual right-hand bank. The captain did not immediately notice the changing attitude of the plane. When the pilot eventually intervened following a bank angle warning, the manual corrections were erratic, which actually increased the right bank to 50 degrees.
Although the autopilot was eventually engaged to stabilize the inclination, subsequent manual control inputs caused the bank angle to increase further toward 70 degrees. A sustained application of right rudder input pushed the bank angle beyond 90 degrees. The aircraft entered a spiral dive and crashed in a mangrove swamp roughly 5.5 km southeast of the airport at approximately 00:08 LT on May 5. The impact caused the aircraft to disintegrate, and there were 114 fatalities.