Six survive as aircraft crash-lands in the desert
WERNER MENGES
A SIGHTSEEING flight came close to ending in death for a pilot and five passengers of a light aircraft at Swakopmund on Saturday, when their aeroplane flipped over after crash-landing at the end of a flight from Sossusvlei.
The aircraft of the Swakopmund-based Pleasure Flights aviation company - a Cessna 210, registration number V5-RGW - had taken off from Swakopmund Airport at about 14h30 on a flight to Sossusvlei, Ericksson Nengola, Director of Aircraft Accident Investigations in the Ministry of Works and Transport, told The Namibian from Swakopmund yesterday.
The aeroplane was piloted by a South African pilot, and had five passengers, understood to be German tourists, on board, Nengola said.
Disaster struck as the aircraft was about to land again at Swakopmund Airport at around 16h30.
According to the information available to him by yesterday afternoon, the aircraft was turning to make its final approach to the airport when its engine failed.
The pilot sent out a mayday call and carried out a landing in the desert some three kilometres from the airport.
But with the landing, the undercarriage of the plane collapsed, Nengola said.
The aircraft flipped over and suffered major damage.
The plane's engine was separated from the fuselage, the wings and tail section were damaged, and three of the plane's seats tore free from the cabin and lay scattered around the crash scene after the accident, Nengola said.
He said he had been informed that two of the passengers were still being treated in hospital by yesterday.
The pilot had already been discharged from hospital by then, and he had been able to interview him as part of the investigation, which is now underway, Nengola said.
SERIES OF CRASHES The crash is the fourth serious light aircraft accident in Namibia since October.
In all three previous incidents foreign visitors to Namibia were the passengers in aeroplanes that crashed shortly after take-off from Windhoek's Eros Airport.
A Namibian pilot and an Italian visitor to Namibia both died when a single-engined Beechcraft in which they had taken off from Eros Airport crashed near the Trade Centre building east of the airport shortly after take-off on October 22.
On January 11, a Cessna 210 aircraft crashed in the Olympia residential area east of the airport, also shortly after taking off, on a flight to Mokuti Lodge.
In that incident, a 24-year-old South African pilot and five Israeli passengers were killed when the aircraft exploded in flames after crashing.
The third crash was in Windhoek on May 9, when another Cessna 210, carrying a South African pilot, two French tourists and two American visitors to Namibia, crashed-landed in the grounds of TransNamib's Gammams Training Centre near the Pionierspark Cemetery when it experienced an engine problem shortly after take-off from Eros Airport.
No-one was killed in that incident, but the passengers suffered serious injuries.