The United States has offered to assist Kenya with satellite information to help identify the international route used by a missing Kenyan airliner in southern Cameroon, a senior Kenyan official said on Saturday.

Kenyan Transport Minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere said before departing for Douala, Cameroon, that the US government was assisting in the search with satellite images taken over the expected flight path.

The minister said Kenyan authorities were doing everything possible to locate the aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, which the airline acquired just six months before the crash.

"We are doing everything possible to identify the location on which the plane went missing. The American government has offered to assist us with satellite information to identify the international air route used by the plane," Mwakwere told journalists. 
Kenya Airways, Africa's second-largest carrier, said a six-month-old Boeing 737-800 passenger jet with 114 people on board went missing early Saturday after taking off from Douala, Cameroon, on a flight to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Mwakwere, who is leading a team of Kenya Airways and government officials to Douala, said it was too early to determine what had happened to the plane.

"We need to get information from the technical experts as to whether it was occasioned by the weather or pilot error or mechanical fault," he told journalists in Nairobi.

Kenya Airways said the last communication with the missing plane was received by the control tower in Douala, on Cameroon's coast, shortly after takeoff.

Cameroonian radio initially said the plane came down near Niete, south along the coast from Douala, although later reports suggested the crash had happened further inland.

"The search location has now been centered around 100 km, south-west of Yaounde (Cameroon's capital)," Kenyan Airways Chief Executive Officer Titus Naikuni told a news conference.

He said an extensive search of the area by low-flying aircraft had found nothing, and a second search team was on its way to the site.

Naikuni said the search and rescue operation was proving to be difficult because it was taking place in the heavy-wooded terrain.

Naikuni spoke as the opposition leadership in the East African nation called on authorities to review their aviation link with West Africa, saying the national carrier had recorded too many crises on the Abidjan route within the last seven years.

Although the airline is thought to have a good safety record, this weekend's crash is not the first for the firm.

In 2000, one of its fleet crashed into the ocean after taking off from Abidjan of Cote d'Ivoire, on its way to Nairobi, killing at least 169 people onboard.

Former foreign minister Kalonzo Musyoka asked Nairobi to reconsider its stand on the bilateral air services charter signed with West Africa, saying the continued occurrence of air disasters in the region pointed at the lack of aviation gears.

While assuring the families and relatives of the ill-fated aircraft of government support, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said his government is in close touch with the authorities in Cameroon to try and ascertain the fate of the missing Kenya Airways plane.

In a statement, issued in Nairobi, Kibaki assured all that the government has put in motion a mechanism to help establish the status of the Kenya Airways plane.

He pointed out that he has followed the reports of the circumstances surrounding the missing Kenya Airways plane that was destined for Nairobi from Douala, Cameroon with concern.

The president stated that his government fully shares the anxieties of the families and friends of the passengers and crew members who were traveling on the plane.

The airline has contacted the families of the passengers but those, who flocked an emergency center set up in Nairobi, blamed the airline for not providing adequate information on the air disaster.

Kenya Airways, one of Africa's few profitable carriers, set up a crisis center to monitor events and a passenger information center at a hotel in Nairobi.

Five Britons were among the passengers, including Anthony Mitchell, a well-known Associated Press journalist based in Nairobi. 

(Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2007)