Three die in city plane crash: Plummets to earth south of Eros Airport

THREE people were killed when a South African-registered aircraft which had taken off from Windhoek’s Eros Airport on a flight to southern Angola crashed in the city early yesterday.

The Cessna Caravan aircraft, bearing the South African registration number ZS-OTU, was wrecked when it crashed in a patch of open veld between Windhoek’s Prosperita and Cimbebasia areas after taking off from Eros Airport.The aeroplane had four people on board. The pilot, who is a South African, and two of the passengers – both understood to be Namibian – were killed in the crash. Another passenger, who is reported to be a resident of Katutura, was injured. He was being treated in a Windhoek hospital yesterday.Ministry of Works and Transport spokesperson Julius Ngweda and the Namibian Police did not want to release the names of the victims of the crash yesterday, as their next of kin still had to be informed of the incident.Addressing a media briefing yesterday afternoon, Ngweda said the crash took place at 06h58, after the aircraft had taken off from Eros Airport en route to Ondjiva in southern Angola.The plane took off in a southern direction.Shortly after take-off the pilot reported having difficulty maintaining the proper rate of climbing, Ngweda said. The aircraft made a turn to the right and then crashed in an open area, he said.Except for the passengers, the aircraft was also carrying a cargo that included paint, building materials and foodstuff.The aeroplane is owned by a South African company, Aviation at Work, in Pretoria, and was operated by an Angolan operator, Airnav, Ngweda said.The cause of the crash was not yet known yesterday, but would be the focus of an investigation by the Directorate of Aircraft Accident Investigations in the Ministry of Works and Transport, Ngweda said. With the aircraft having been registered in South Africa, investigators from South Africa will be taking part in the Namibian investigation, he said.Yesterday’s crash is the first fatal plane accident in Namibia in just over 14 months. The last fatal crash took place when a Cessna 210 carrying five Swiss visitors to Namibia made an emergency landing on a street in Windhoek’s Hochland Park area after taking off from Eros Airport on September 7 last year. A 44-year-old surgeon who was one of the passengers sustained fatal injuries in that crash.In an official investigation into the Hochland Park crash it was concluded that a plastic bag that had been left in the aircraft’s engine during a maintenance service had cut off the air intake of the plane, leading to the crash.