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Namibia: Lucky Escape for Five After Air Crash in City
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Werner Menges
Windhoek
FIVE occupants of a light aeroplane had a close brush with death when their aircraft crashlanded shortly after taking off from Eros Airport in Windhoek on Friday morning.
The Cessna 210 aircraft, operated by Scenic Air, had taken off from Eros Airport just before 09h00 and was heading to Mokuti Lodge near the Etosha National Park with a pilot and four foreign visitors to Namibia on board.
Just after take-off the pilot reported to Eros air traffic control that the aeroplane was experiencing an engine problem, the Director of Aircraft Accident Investigations in the Ministry of Works and Transport, Ericsson Nengola, told The Namibian on Friday.
Nengola said the pilot tried to carry out an emergency landing, but as the aircraft started losing height, it clipped a power line and crashed.
"I was driving along the highway past the cemetery when the plane flew very, very low.
It touched the top of the trees with its wheels before flying into the power line and falling to the ground.
It all happened very fast," said an eyewitness.
The aeroplane came down on the grounds of TransNamib's Gammams Training Centre near the Pionierspark Cemetery and came to a rest close to a carriage standing on a railway line on the premises.
According to Dene Herselman, co-owner of Scenic Air, the aircraft's pilot is a South African national, Dean McConnell, and the passengers on board were two French citizens and two American nationals.
They were all hospitalised, mostly with serious back injuries.
Nengola said the cause of the incident is being investigated.
Because some parts of an aircraft that had been involved in an accident in Namibia, such as engine components, often have to be sent out of the country to be examined as part of the investigation, it could take some time - such as a number of months - before a report on the investigation will be completed, Nengola indicated.
Friday's accident is the third crash of a light aircraft shortly after take-off from Eros Airport in seven months.
On October 22 last year, a single-engine Beechcraft carrying a Namibian pilot and one Italian visitor to Namibia crashed near the Trade Centre building east of the airport shortly after take-off from Eros.
Both the pilot and the passenger were killed.
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.
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The reports on the investigation of those two incidents have not been completed yet, but both investigations are in their final stages, Nengola indicated.
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