UTM rejects German plane crash report, demands a Commission of Inquiry
In a surprising twist to the tale, UTM has vehemently rejected an investigations report by the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) into the plane crash which killed its president Saulos Chilima, former first lady Shanil Dzimbiri and seven others on June 10 this year.
The party has since asked President Lazarus Chakwera to institute a commission of inquiry into the plane crash.
Addressing Malawians at Masintha Ground in Lilongwe, UTM campaign director Makwenda Chunga said the report by the BFU is far from being impressive.
“Karipoti kabwera dzulo, karipoti. Karipoti aka ife sitikalola karipoti. Ndibwerezenso. Ripoti iyi ife sitikuilola. Ndipo tikuti ngati kuli ripoti imene yabweretsa mpungwepungwe kwambiri, ife sitikuilola [we are not impressed with the so-called crash investigations report that has been released. I repeat, we reject that so-called report in its entirelity],” Chunga said.
He observed that they were initially told that the plane crashed after it failed to land at Mzuzu Airport because of bad weather but that now they were being told that the plane never reached Mzuzu Airport but was just going round and round instead of going to Mzuzu.
He said Chilima was, together with Chakwera, in court during the 2019 elections case and demonstrations that characterised that period and that Chilima is the one that played a key role in his ascendancy to the country’s top seat.
“Here I am sending this message to the government. Saulos Chilima will never be forgotten in the history of this country.
We are hurt. When we are in our homes, it is like he has just gone to the ghetto of Ndirande and he will be back.
“When we are in our homes, we feel like Chilima has gone to Kameme in Chitipa and he will be back. But Saulos is gone for good. May the spirit of Saulos Chilima be in all of you here; the fearless spirit,” Chunga said.
The development comes after, on Saturday, Information Minister—who is also government spokesperson—Moses Kunkuyu addressed journalists on the issue of the plane crash.
When one journalist asked: “What will you do with the recommendations given in the report?”, Kunkuyu responded: “Any sane government would act on the recommendations. So, we will do as the recommendations have said.”
Another question was: “The plane lacked some necessary equipment like Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) or Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and functional Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), who do you think should take responsibility?”
While stating that the report did not apportion any blame on anyone, Kunkuyu said he could not respond properly as he had no knowledge on how the said equipment could have prevented the crash.
When asked if the President also used to board the same plane, his response was: “Yes, and he boarded it many times more.”
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People shoud understand that this plane by design was to remain light for short field take off and landing. It was not designed to carry heavy loads or indeed, its powerplant, small propeller engines were not designed to support many load bearing equipment such as CVR, EMERGENCY LOCATOR beacons even de-icing equipment and heating equipment, etc that would have required heavy and power consuming transformers to operate them. Even if this was the case, it would have meant that the engine power would have had to be severely decreased.
Operationally, if the weather is bad in Mzuzu, because of high terrain there, aircraft cannot hold there. Any holding, is usually down around Ekwendeni, especially as there is normally good breaks in weather where pilots can maintain sight of the ground. Such holding is only possible if the weather at Mzuzu is expected to become better to support a landing attempt. Similarly, there is no radio station at Mzuzu to offer any kind of instrument holding that avoids staying clear of the high ground. Minimum safe height is 10, 100 ft.
Similarly, I mentioned the limited all up weight of this small plane. This also means that they cannot carry a lot of fuel to allow for lengthy holding time. This means that any holding was of a very limited duration before decision to return to KIA. The need to carry out holding would have required pilots to calculate the absolute minimum fuel required to start diverting back to KIA. Any miscalculation would result in fuel imbalance especially during turn manouevres, (where trying to see gaps in clouds), but if fuel level is low, this could easily result in engine fuel starvation and shutdown. And on this aircraft, it cannot fly on a single engine especially with the heavy loading on this particular trip. Engine failure could also have been caused by icing. And in bad weather, the pilots could not have maintained height and maybe attempted to make an emergency landing even though they could not see the ground.
This was an accident.