1969 Aswan Ilyushin Il-18 crash 1969 Aswan Ilyushin Il-18 crash On 20 March 1969, a United Arab Airlines Ilyushin Il-18 crashed while attempting to land at Aswan Airport. 100 of the 105 passengers and crew on board were killed in the crash. The flight was a non-scheduled international passenger service from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to Aswan, Egypt. The aircraft was carrying home Muslim worshippers who had won a pilgrimage through a lottery. It was dark in the early morning when the flight attempted to land and blowing sand had reduced visibility to 2–3 kilometers. After two unsuccessful attempts to land, the aircraft was making a
Aswan Low Dam in the lower Nile. The dam, originally limited in height by conservation concerns, worked as designed, but provided inadequate storage capacity for planned development and was raised twice, between 1907 and 1912 and again in 1929–1933. These heightenings still did not meet irrigation demands and in 1946 it was nearly over-topped in an effort to maximize pool elevation. This led to the investigation and construction of the Aswan High Dam upstream. The earliest recorded attempt to build a dam near Aswan was in the 11th century, when the Arab polymath and engineer Ibn al-Haytham (known as "Alhazen" in the West)