A retired military pilot has told the parliamentary committee investigating the Chikangawa plane crash that he would not have permitted the aircraft carrying former vice-president Saulos Chilima to depart, given the weather conditions at Mzuzu Airdrome on the morning of the crash.
Retired Brigadier Mtende says he’d have grounded fatal Chilima flight: ‘I Would Not Have Taken Off in That Weather’
Brigadier General Juvenalis Mtende, a former Dornier pilot with extensive experience flying VVIP missions, told the ad-hoc committee that conditions at the airfield that morning were poor enough that the flight should have been cancelled.
He said there had been “no significant improvement” in conditions at Mzuzu since the crash.
Mtende said an experienced crew would have been well placed to assess the risks involved, and that continuing with the mission under those conditions was extremely dangerous.
He said he would personally have advised the vice-president that the aircraft could not safely proceed.
Asked how he would have responded under the pressures typically associated with VVIP flights, Mtende said he would have stood by his assessment despite the professional and political consequences that might follow.
He said any refusal to fly would need to be communicated “clearly and confidently,” adding that safety considerations should take precedence over rank, protocol or expectation.
His testimony is likely to add further scrutiny to the committee’s ongoing inquiry into why the aircraft was permitted to depart despite deteriorating weather conditions and concerns over landing conditions at Mzuzu, questions that remain central to establishing the circumstances surrounding the crash that killed Chilima and eight others on 10 June 2024.
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