Kenya has had a chequered history with air travel. While some incidents claimed the lives of prominent politicians, others were notable for wiping out a chunk of the masses.
On Wednesday, news broke that a light aircraft had crashed in Londiani killing all five passengers on board. The Cessna plane was traveling from The Maaasai Mara to Lodwar. But how does it fair with other plane crashes?
In 2000, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed, killing 169 passengers. The flight was an international scheduled Abidjan–Lagos-Nairobi passenger service, operated with Airbus A310-300. It crashed into the sea off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire on January 30, 2000, shortly after takeoff from Félix Houphouët-Boigny International Airport, Abidjan.
There were 179 people on board. Only 10 survived, in what was the first fatal accident for Kenya Airways. The aircraft involved in the accident was an Airbus A310-304, registration 5Y-BEN, named Harambee Star.
The airframe entered service with Kenya Airways in September 1986 and had logged 58,115 flight hours at the time of the accident. The flight was under the command of 44-year-old Capt Paul Muthee, an experienced officer who had logged 11,636 flying hours at the time of the accident, 1,664 on an Airbus A310.
The airframe was completely destroyed by the impact. Powerboat operators and fishermen extracted at least seven of the survivors from the water. Of those survivors, three were Nigerians, one was a Kenyan, one was a Gambian, one was an Indian, and one was Rwandan.
One survivor, a Frenchman, swam almost 1 mile (1.6 km) to the shore. Of the 12 initial survivors, two died in hospital. Of the 10 ultimate survivors, nine received serious injuries and one received minor injuries. Four survivors received first-degree burns from contact with jet fuel in the water.