PASSENGERS IN LIGHT AIRCRAFT CRASH GET OFF LIGHTLY
(Posted 02nd January 2016)
A privately owned Cessna 210 this afternoon came down outside Nairobi’s Wilson Airport perimeter short of the runway but the pilot and his three passengers walked away from the wreck without major injuries.
The aircraft is registered in Kenya as 5Y-BME with the manufacturer production number MSN T21064239 and reportedly was on a domestic flight from Vipingo to Nairobi’s Wilson Airport. For yet to be established reasons it came down in an area just outside the airport perimeter fence, known as Uhuru Gardens. The people who were picknicking and plane watching there scrambled for their safety to get out of the way of the aircraft which lost its landing gear in the crash and sustained substantial damage not long after 4 p.m. local time.
(Picture taken from Tweet by @tycoonews)
The lucky escape also affirmed the Kenya Airport Authority’s efforts to have the final approach flight paths cleared of housing and other obstacles to allow for such unfortunate situation to play out safely and not, as was the case in the past, an aircraft crashing into buildings with fatal consequences.
The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority’s accident investigators have reportedly already visited and cordoned off the scene and an enquiry will go underway more or less immediately to establish the cause of the crash. For breaking and regular aviation news from the Eastern African region look no further than this space.
