On Thursday, March 23, Tanzanian authorities blamed the pilots of the ill-fated Precision Air plane after it crashed into Lake Victoria in November 2022.
According to a report by Tanzania's Ministry of Works and Transport, the pilots failed to heed to warnings from an automatic pull-up alarm system.
A Kenyan was a co-pilot of the plane which crashed with 39 travellers on board, leaving 19 dead. The report indicated that the two pilots ignored three alerts issued by the enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) about the excessively high descent rate.
"The warning was not followed by corrective action of the flight crew," the Ministry's aircraft accident and incident investigation branch stated.
"Instead, the flight crew pushed the control column into a nose-down position," it added.
The warning was issued due to poor weather conditions that prevailed when the plane took off. As a result, Precision Air plunged into Lake Victoria.
"This type of weather is common around the Bukoba Airport and is well known to pilots," the report read.
The Kenyan pilot and another Kenyan passenger were among the 19 passengers who were pronounced dead by Tanzanian authorities at the time of the crash.
Fiona Ndila, the wife of the Kenyan pilot, recalled their last phone conversation before the plane took off. She indicated that her husband was full of life and sought to understand how his son was fairing.
"Safe skies!" the wife told the husband.
"Thanks, travel safely too," he replied to Ndila, who had planned to travel to Mtito Andei by road at the time.
Preliminary reports indicated that the pilots could not escape after the plane crashed as the cockpit's door was locked.
"If there could have been immediate rescue operations, it is most likely that more people would have survived," the ministry report read in part.
