SA: 1987 HELDERBERG CRASH: Salvaged Registered Airmail legal envelope from Tokyo (Undated, known correspondence 25 XI 87) to Cape Town recovered from the South African Airways Boeing 747 "Helderberg" which crashed into the Indian Ocean 100 km from Mauritius with the loss of all 159 persons on board. Accompanied by then-contemporary copy of forwarding letter from the Johannesburg Post Office. Preprinted envelope of THE FUJI BANK, LIMITED, TOKYO addressed to the Standard Bank in Cape Town. Manuscript numbering "No 14" in the same hand and style as the other recovered pieces. Literature records 3 surviving letters from this crash; we take that number to now be 6. A rarity showpiece for the airmail connoisseur! Ex Polakow. See additional images and of certificate. SAA Flight SA 295, the Boeing 747 Combi ZS-SAS "Helderberg" left Taipei for Plaisance Mauritius at 13h23 on 27th November with 159 on board. Some 46 minutes before ETA at Plaisance, the pilot Capt. Dawie Uys informed Plaisance approach control that there was smoke in the aircraft and that an emergency descent to flight level 140 had been initiated. (Flight level 140 is a flight path 4,267km above sea level). The aircraft would have been flying at 10,67km above sea level. Capt. Uys did not signal an SOS emergency code. His last message to Plaisance was logged at 00.04 on 28th November and it is thought that the aircraft crashed into the sea at 00.07 on 28th November. There were no survivors. The cause of the onboard fire remains a controversy with speculation that arms, ammunition & rocket fuel were being carried. See: http://ewn.co.za/2014/09/07/Alleged-cause-of-Helderberg-plane-exposed
