This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.
Summary
- A military aircraft carrying Malawi’s vice president has been missing since morning.
- Malawi’s president has canceled his trip to the Bahamas and ordered an immediate search.
- There has not been any contact with the aircraft since it went off radar.
An aircraft carrying the vice president of Malawi, Dr. Saulos Klaus Chilima, and nine other passengers has gone missing after failing to land at Mzuzu International Airport. Authorities are searching for the aircraft, and there are fears that it might have crashed in a forest in the northern part of the country.
Flight from Lilongwe to Mzuzu
The office of the President and Cabinet of the Republic of Malawi confirmed that the Malawi Defense Force aircraft carrying Dr Chilima and nine others failed to make its scheduled landing at Mzuzu International Airport at 10:02. The aircraft had departed Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, at 09:17 local time.
However, the aircraft went off the radar, and all efforts by aviation authorities to make contact have been unsuccessful. Malawi’s President, Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, was informed about the incident and has since canceled his flight to the Bahamas. All regional and national agencies have been ordered to conduct a search and rescue operation to locate the aircraft.
While there are no details of the aircraft the vice president was flying on, ch-aviation shows that the Malawi Army Air Wing has two active Dornier Do228-200s (registrations MAAW-T03 and MAAW-T04) in its fleet. The older aircraft, MAAW-T03, was delivered in June 1998, while MAAW-T04 was delivered in March 1990.
The Malawian government will provide further updates as more details emerge. Dr Chilima, born in February 1973, was first sworn in as Malawi’s vice president in May 2014. He was sworn in for his second term in June 2020. According to the BBC, the vice president was on his way to represent the government at a former cabinet minister’s funeral. Mzuzu airport was the closest to the funeral’s location.
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