Bad weather, error led to Malawi VP plane crash: report
The plane crash that killed Malawi's Vice President Saulos Chilima six months ago was due to bad weather and human error, according to an inquiry released on Saturday that ruled out foul play, AFP reported.
The military plane crashed in cloudy and windy conditions on June 10, causing "high-velocity injuries" that killed everyone on board on impact, according to the findings of a commission of inquiry read out live on television.
The charismatic Chilima, 51, was a popular figure in Malawi, particularly among young people, but had a strained relationship with President Lazarus Chakwera. His United Transformation Movement (UTM) party expressed concern over the circumstances surrounding Chilima's death and demanded the inquiry.
"Based on the evidence that the commission has received, it is the commission's findings that the probable cause of the accident was a combination of environmental factors and human factors," chairperson Jabbar Alide said, reading from the commission's report.
Alide said the two pilots appeared to have lost their visual references due to low clouds and strong winds.
Everyone died instantly and "there is no evidence of possibility of homicide or other causes of death, such as animal bites or any other third-party agents before and after the accident," Alide said.
The report, which took four-and-a-half hours to read out on TV, was due to be handed to be Chakwera.
Chilima was travelling with a former first lady, Shanil Dzimbiri, to the funeral of a former cabinet minister in Mzuzu, about 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of the capital, Lilongwe, when the plane came down in dense fog.
Autopsies showed that everyone on the plane had suffered severe and multiple injuries to the face, chest and limbs, "indicating high-velocity impact against solid structures in front of them, likely the back of seats," the report said.
"All injuries were non-survivable."
The Malawi Army aircraft left a large crater in the ground on impact and broke apart.
Chilima's UTM allied with Chakwera's Malawi Congress Party (MCP) to win the 2020 presidential election, but he was sidelined soon afterwards.
In 2022 he was arrested and charged with graft over a bribery scandal involving a British-Malawian businessman and stripped of his powers as vice president. The charges were dropped a month before the plane crash.
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