11 Dead After Tourist Plane Crashes During Flight to Wildlife Safari

A wildlife safari plane carrying tourists crashed in Kenya on Tuesday, Oct. 28, killing eleven people, according to The Associated Press.

The Mombasa Air Safari Cessna Caravan-type aircraft went down around 5:30 a.m. local time while traveling from Diani to Kichwa Tembo in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) said in a statement posted on X. The plane, registered as 5Y-CCA, was initially reported to have twelve people on board.

Mombasa Air Safari confirmed in a statement shared by Reuters that there were no survivors. Kwale County Commissioner Stephen Orinde told the AP that all passengers were foreign tourists, with the airline later confirming that the victims included eight Hungarians, two Germans, and the Kenyan pilot.

Authorities said the pilot failed to communicate with air traffic control after takeoff. The control tower attempted to reach him for 30 minutes before the aircraft was discovered, according to the AP.

Le Parisien reported that burnt wreckage was found at the crash site near Kwale town, about six miles from the center. “Our primary focus right now is on providing all possible support to the families affected,” Mombasa Air Safari said in a statement cited by the BBC.

Commissioner Orinde said that bad weather may have played a role in the crash. “The weather is not very good here at the moment. Since early in the morning, it is raining and it is very misty, but we cannot preempt [the findings],” he told the BBC.

The accident comes nearly three months after another fatal crash in Kenya, when six people were killed after a small medical plane went down in a residential neighborhood near the Mwihoko Secondary School in Utawala.

That incident, which occurred on Aug. 7, involved a Cessna Citation 560 ambulance aircraft that lost both radio and radar contact shortly after departing Wilson Airport, according to a statement from KCAA Director General Emile N. Arao. Four people on the plane and two people on the ground were killed, Reuters and Newsweek reported.