Tanzanian aviation authorities Tuesday said they are dispatching a team of experts to investigate the Saturday plane crash in the Comoros that left 14 passengers and crew missing.
Director General of the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA), Hamza Johari, said the experts would join their counterparts in the Comoros to investigate the accident that occured off the Indian Ocean island nation.
The aircraft, a Cessna Caravan, crashed into the sea as it was about to land.
Comorian authorities said the fate of the 14 people on board – 12 Comorian passengers and two Tanzanian pilots – could not be immediately ascertained.
Mohammed Mazrui, whose firm, Fly Zanzibar Limited, owns the fateful aircraft, said Monday that it was leased to a Comorian carrier.
He said the plane was flying from the capital, Moroni, to the city of Fomboni when the accident occurred.
Media reports quoted Mazrui as saying that the plane disappeared from radar about 2.5 km from its destination, with the cause of the crash still unknown.
The Comorian Transport Ministry said debris believed to be that of the missing aircraft had been found, adding that an operation was being conducted to recover the debris from the ocean.
A senior police officer, Abdel-Kader Mohamed, told the media in Moroni that three speedboats had been despatched to the crash site to search for survivors and collect the debris and items belonging to the passengers.
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