Nine passengers survive Mafia plane crash
Dar es Salaam. Nine people today August 6, cheated death when a Tropical Airline plane crashed in Mafia.
The Rufiji Special Police Zone Commander, Mr Onesmo Lyanga who confirmed the incident said that out of the nine people on board, six were injured and sent to Mafia District Hospital for treatment.
The other three walked away unhurt and were allowed to proceed with their scheduled journey.
The Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) director general, Mr Hamza Johari confirmed to The Citizen that a plane, carrying nine people, crashed as it attempted to take off from Mafia Airport.
“It is true that a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan plane, operated by Tropical Air - has crashed. The information we have is that it crashed after attempting to take off,” he told The Citizen.
According to him, they were yet to establish the reason of the crash but they are working on it.
“We have already deployed a team of experts who will examine what happened. When that is done, we will be able to issue a complete statement,” he said.
“We are not aware of the cause but we are working with relevant agencies to establish the cause of crash,” he said.
This is the second plane crash in Tanzania’s airspace in a period of one week.
On Saturday, two South African pilots – who were involved in a project for teens to build a homemade plane and fly it across Africa – were killed when their plane crashed in Tabora.
Des Werner and Werner Froneman were in a small plane supporting teenagers who last month flew a homebuilt aircraft from Cape Town to Cairo.
The pilots had planned to travel from Uganda to Lilongwe in Malawi ahead of their return to South Africa on Monday.
However, they requested to land in Tanzania on Saturday after reporting engine problems.
The light aircraft landed at Tabora and after the pilots thought the engine problem had been fixed, they departed again, only to crash five minutes after takeoff.
TCAA said yesterday that all its experts have arrived at the scene of the accident and were continuing with investigations into what caused the engine problem.
