Plane carrying foreign tourists crashes en route to popular reserve in Kenya, killing 11

A plane crash killed 11 people, mostly foreign tourists, in Kenya’s coastal Kwale region early Tuesday while en route to the Masai Mara National Reserve.

Mombasa Air Safari airline said in a statement that eight Hungarian and two German passengers were on board and that the Kenyan pilot also died. The plane crashed in a mountainous and wooded area about 40 kilometers from the Diani landing strip, authorities said.

The airline did not confirm what time the plane left the Diani runway, saying the pilot did not communicate upon takeoff and that the airport control tower attempted to contact him for 30 minutes before the plane was located.

“Our main focus at this time is to provide as much support as possible to the affected families,” the airline said in a statement obtained by BBC News.

Investigating agencies were investigating the cause of the accident that occurred at 5:30 a.m. local time, Kwale County Commissioner Stephen Orinde told The News. Subsequently, the Ministry of Transportation reported in a statement that the accident occurred at 8:35 local time. In the morning it rained heavily on the Kenyan coast.

“The weather here is not very good at the moment. It has been raining and very foggy since early in the morning, but we cannot anticipate [the findings]”Orinde told BBC News.

The plane burst into flames, leaving charred remains at the scene, authorities said. Witnesses told the AP that they heard a loud bang and when they arrived at the scene they found unrecognizable human remains.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority had earlier said 12 people were on board the Cessna Caravan-type aircraft.

The Masai Mara National Reserve, located west of the coast, is a two-hour direct flight from Diani, a popular coastal town known for its sandy beaches. The reserve attracts large numbers of tourists as it hosts the annual wildebeest migration from the Serengeti in Tanzania.

Last year, tourists were evacuated by helicopter from the reserve as devastating floods hit the sanctuary.

The white sand beaches of Kenya’s coast along the Indian Ocean attract tourists from all over the world.

According to the most recent safety oversight audit for Kenya published on the International Civil Aviation Organization site, in 2018, the country fell below the global average in accident investigations.

In 2019, a small plane carrying five people from the nature reserve crashed in the west of the country, killing two Americans.