[Doom1]

On 15 April 2008, a Hewa Bora Airways operated McDonnell Douglas DC-9-51 plane crashed into a residential and market area of Goma of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - immediately south of Goma International Airport.
The eastern part of the DRC has been war-torn for decades, as various factions seek control of mineral resources. Goma is a center for the air shipping of cassiterite (tin oxide ore) from Nord-Kivu.
The European Union has placed all DRC airlines on its List of airlines banned in the EU. HBA had held a single exemption for a single Boeing 767-266ER tail number 9Q-CJD, construction number 193H-1209, but that too had been removed on 11 April 2008. Very similar crashes in the DRC the previous October in the capital, Kinshasa and in 1996 also came down in residential or market areas. Because the DRC has so little passable roadway, most freight is moved by air and markets are common near airstrips.
HBA operate a number of different aircraft types, none of them modern. This aircraft was 31 years old.
Goma is on the volcanically active Great African Rift Valley. One volcano, Nyiragongo, is so close that its January 2002 eruption destroyed the beginning of runway 18 (or the end of runway 36), leaving just two kilometres for safe takeoffs or for aborted ones. 2,000 metres (6,500 ft), however, is adequate for the DC-9, which was designed to operate off shorter runways.Goma International is at 1500 metres elevation, and the mid-afternoon temperature is about 22 Celsius. These factors would reduce the maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) on the 1995 metre runway from 55 tonnes to less than 45.Another report asserts that only 1600 to 1800m of the runway was usable.If the lower of these figures were correct, then the corresponding MTOW would be reduced another 3 tonnes.