(Dar es Salaam) Tanzanian authorities announced on Tuesday that the wreckage of a plane that crashed in Lake Victoria on Sunday has been pulled from the water after one of the deadliest air disasters in the world. country’s history.
Posted at 11:48 a.m.
Nineteen people died when the Precision Air plane plunged into the waters of Africa’s largest lake, about 100 meters from Bukoba airport in the northwest of the country, triggering operations to intensive rescue of rescuers, fishermen and residents to try to recover survivors.
Precision Air flight PW494 from the economic capital Dar es Salaam crashed with 43 people on board. The accident was caused by bad weather, according to the police.
“We have completely pulled the aircraft out of the water and now the professional investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing,” the Tanzania Airports Authority (TAA) said in a statement.
“Bukoba airport will be reopened soon to allow flight operations to continue as usual,” she added.
Video footage released by local media shows the twisted wreckage of the plane being pulled by a crane, its nose falling to the ground, before being lowered onto the grass.
Precision Air, Tanzania’s largest private airline, said the crashed aircraft was an ATR 42-500, manufactured by Franco-Italian company ATR, and had 43 people on board – 39 passengers, including a baby, and four crew members. Twenty-four people survived the crash.
A Kenyan national and a Briton are among the victims, government spokesman Gerson Msigwa told reporters in Bukoba.
“We are in communication with the respective embassies to forward the bodies,” he said.
Msigwa added that ATR investigators are expected in Tanzania on Tuesday to join their counterparts from Precision Air and TAA, who are already there.
Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa and several ministers attended Monday with hundreds of people at Kaitaba stadium in Bukoba a prayer ceremony led by Muslim and Christian clerics, before the bodies of the victims were handed over to their families.
Owned by Kenya’s national flag carrier Kenya Airways, Precision Air was founded in 1993 and operates domestic and regional flights as well as private jets to tourist destinations such as the Serengeti National Park and the Zanzibar Archipelago.
This accident comes five years after the death of 11 people in the crash of a plane belonging to a safari company in northern Tanzania.
In 1999, a dozen people, including ten American tourists, were killed in a plane crash in northern Tanzania while on a flight from Serengeti National Park to Kilimanjaro airport.