Search for missing pilot could take longer, experts say

Dar es Salaam. The family of a missing pilot, Mr Samwel Gibuyi, rest their hopes on authorities to trace his whereabouts, as experts say it may take longer to find the plane that disappeared from the radar for nearly two weeks now.

  Those who spoke to The Citizen yesterday said despite ongoing surveillance efforts, it is a complicated task to locate aircraft missing in the interior of a country.

However, they were positive that the missing plane which was being flown by a 31-year old pilot of the conservation organisation Pams Foundation, from Matemanga Village in Ruvuma Region to the Selous Game Reserve, will be traced.

Aviation expert with about 47 years of experience John Njawa said: “There is no way you can trace using conventional radar because small aircraft flies at low altitudes.”

Official records show that there have been similar cases in Tanzania and globally.

On November 1, 1997 a Piper PA 31-350 en-route Nairobi-Zanzibar crashed on the Kibo wing of Mount Kilimanjaro at 15,400 feet in bad weather.

The aircraft remained missing for six years till it was accidentally sighted by a mountain climber in 2003.

But on the current incident, Mr Njawa, the safety regulation ex-director at the Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA), said it was too early to speculate on the possibilities and advise on the same unless the root cause of the incident was made public.

“We must first know whether the incident was triggered by the equipment (plane failure) or the pilot himself (human error),” he stressed.

Referring to the Mount Kilimanjaro incident, aviation expert Gaudence Temu said the incident was not puzzling on the grounds that it is not expected, but it is normal occurrence due to human errors and technical hitches.

Mr Temu said the plane probably crashed, or probably not.

“Any miracle can happen. He might be alive somewhere. I’m confident through the search and rescue team the plane will be spotted no matter how long it takes,” Mr Temu exuded his optimism.

He said after the search and rescue team came up with the findings, experts could stand a chance to advise on possible steps to take as preventive measures against plane missing.

However, he said as a general recommendation, for the interest of safety, before allowing an aircraft to fly, authorities must make sure it is airworthy.

Further, pilots flying the aircraft might have the required prerequisites.

In addition to that the search and rescue team must be well equipped to up their efficiency.

Officials from the TCAA were not available for comment on the progress by the search and rescue team yesterday.

A renowned aviation expert Juma Fimbo was of the view that the general public needed to be open-minded and resist from jumping to a conclusion on the negative possibilities.

“I am very confident they will find the plane,” said Mr Fimbo, banking his hopes on the shoulders of a search and rescue team whom he said were complying with international regulations of search and rescue.

But on the question of when, he said, was another thing that could depend on where the aircraft fell.

Referring to the Malaysian Airlines incident which remains to be a puzzle, he called for the need to be patient at a time when the search and rescue team was doing its job.

The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 continues to baffle both investigators and the rest of the world as rescue officials are “bewildered” by the Boeing 777-200 that went missing without a trace on March 8, 2014.

This is despite the fact that three official investigations were launched in the wake of MH370’s disappearance.

The first was the largest, most rigorous, and most expensive: the technically advanced Australian underwater-search effort, which was focused on locating the main debris in order to retrieve the airplane’s flight-data and cockpit voice recorders.

The second official investigation belonged to the Malaysian police, and amounted to background checks of everyone on the airplane as well as some of their friends.

The third official investigation was the accident inquiry, intended not to adjudicate liability but to find probable cause, and to be conducted according to the highest global standards by an international team