Questions linger over Chilima’s plane crash investigation report

Government says the Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) has not yet produced an Interim Report on the cause of the plane crash that claimed the life of late Vice President Saulos Chilima and eight others on 10^th June this year.

According to a statement signed by Minister of Information Moses Kunkuyu, the Bureau has however communicated to Malawi that it will publish this Interim Report on its website this Friday, 30th August 2024

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It states that in the days after the plane crash, the agency conducted an inspection of the crash site, the plane’s wreckage, the aerodromes of the departure and destination airports, and the home base of the aircraft in Zomba and also interviewed various officials within the aviation authority.

He says once these inspections were done, the investigators verbally briefed both the bereaved family and the Government about what they had recovered from the wreckage of the plane.

In the statement, Kunkuyu clarifies this verbal briefing is what some are mistakenly referring to as a report, but no report was submitted.

“It was merely a verbal briefing to inform the bereaved family and the Government that the Bureau had recovered a Global Positioning System from the wreckage, and that they were taking the GPS back to their lab for comprehensive analysis, along with their analysis of the departure and destination aerodromes, which they had also inspected. It should be noted that the Bureau published the contents of the briefing on its website on 11th July 2024.

“The investigators had mentioned in this briefing to the bereaved family and the Government that once their laboratory analysis in Germany is done, which they said would take some time, the Bureau would produce a report and release it to the public directly through their website to certify and safeguard the independence of the Bureau’s findings about what caused the plane crash.” reads the statement.

However when asked in an interview with a DW Reporter in Germany during his recent visit on reasons behind the delay of the report being released to the public following its conclusion and submission to government, President Lazarus Chakwera had this to say:

“There is no hold-up per say and so once that report has come to the necessary offices, we will make sure that it is released.

“When those people came, they also had the privilege I’d say but for us it was an honour to have the preliminary report even assure the family what they had done and that they were coming going to prepare a preliminary one before a conclusive one and that has come. And so they will make sure that it is released”

On how long the public should wait for its release, Chakwera indicated: No they don’t need to wait any longer, we made commitment that we would want any of that to not be known to all of the Malawians.

Writing on his Facebook page a private practice lawyer Khumbo Soko questioned why and how the matter is being handled in this manner.