Ten people are dead in Malawi, including the country’s vice-president, after a Malawian armed forces Dornier 228-200 turboprop crashed in the southeast African country on 10 June.
The twin-engined aircraft carrying Saulos Chilima encountered bad weather, including heavy fog, en route to the northern city of Mzuzu and was directed by air traffic control to return to Malawi’s capital Lilongwe. The flight failed to arrive and the country’s president ordered the military to launch a search and rescue effort.
A day later, aircraft wreckage from the flight was located in a forest conservation area.
“The plane has been found,” Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera said in a televised national address on 11 June. “The search and rescue team has found the aircraft near a hill in the Chikangawa forest and they have found it completely destroyed, with no survivors.”
All passengers were killed by the impact, he adds.
Chakwera notes that the crew of the aircraft had safely completed a flight with the same Dornier 228 earlier that day. The Malawian government did not immediately suggest an explanation for the fatal crash.
Cirium data indicates there were three such aircraft in the inventory of the Malawian Defence Force air wing, with an average age of 36 years.
