NAMIBIA: 3 Namibians Perish In Air Crash

A Cessna 441 Conquest on a medical emergency flight from Windhoek to Cape Town crashed into the Plattekloof mountains early yesterday morning on final approach for landing.

All five people on board, including three Namibians, perished in the crash. The other two deceased were South Africans. The names of the deceased were confirmed by the South African Broadcasting Corporation last night as: the pilot Amore Espag, his co-pilot Steven Naude, paramedic Alfred Ward, all Namibians; and patient Gabriel le Roux and her relative, Charmaine Kotze, both South Africans who were picked up from Oranjemund to be flown to Cape Town.

E-Med Rescue24 yesterday sent a memo to the entrance gate at Eros Airport informing the security not to allow any media onto their premises due to the sensitivity of the matter.

It is believed the ill-fated plane took off at around 06h50 from Oranjemund Airport and an hour later disappeared off the radar, the Western Cape medical spokesperson Mark van der Heever told News24.

"The emergency call was received around 07h50 at the control room. We dispatched a helicopter to go search for it. At 08h03 the helicopter arrived in the Plattekloof area and found the wreckage still burning," said Wilfred Solomons Johannes, spokesperson of Cape Town Risk Disaster management.

The plane went down near Maastricht farm near the Tygervalley Road. All people were declared dead at the scene and rescue personnel took the bodies to a nearby morgue.

The 24-year-old Alfred Ward was said to be one of Namibia's finest paramedics. His father Terrance Ward, a resident of Swakopmund, and also a paramedic by profession and a former paramedic at International SOS, yesterday confirmed his son died in the fatal crash.News24 reported the search for the missing plane caused several flight delays to and from Cape Town International Airport.

However, a spokesman for the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) confirmed flights had resumed after the wreckage of the plane was found.Western Cape premier Helen Zille confirmed the crash in a tweet' saying the light aircraft had crashed in a nature reserve in the Tygerberg hills. She said that after the plane had lost radio contact' the airport could not risk allowing any more aircraft in the airspace in case of a collision' but once the missing plane was located' planes were allowed to take off again. Trying to get comment from the Directorate of Aircraft Accident Investigation in Windhoek proved futile, as all calls to the mobile phone of its director Ericksson Nengola went to voicemail.One of the flights affected by the delays was flight SA-314, whose passengers included former Proteas cricketer Herschelle Gibbs and cricket commentator Neil Manthorp.Gibbs tweeted: "Waiting to take off and captain says the radars all over the country have gone down and they busy searching for one aircraft at present."In a separate tweet' Manthorp stated: "Radar systems down across the country ... one plane missing in Western Cape... "