South Sudan forms committee to investigate Wau plane crash

By Ngor Arol Garang

March 29, 2012 (JUBA) – South Sudan has formed a technical fact finding committee to investigate the cause of a plane crash at Wau Airport on Thursday morning, according to officials.

Multiple eyewitnesses told Sudan Tribune that no lives were lost in when the Feeder Airlines commercial flight crashed near the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal State.

Mayom Kuoc Malek, South Sudan’s Deputy Minister of Transport told Sudan Tribune that he learned of the incident from relative of some of the passengers who survived the crash but did had not received a detailed report.

He said that the fact finding committee he was establishing would discover whether a technical or human error caused the accident.

Morris Ukel, who works at Wau Airport, said that the plane crashed on Thursday at 9:30am but declined to comment on reports that some passengers had lost some of their belongings.

“It was an unfortunate incident but we thank God that no lives were lost. There were only slight injuries” Ukel told Sudan Tribune.

He attributed the cause to a technical failure, explaining that one wheel refused to return inside plane after takeoff.

Feeder Airlines, which takes its name from the aviation network which operated in southern Sudan in the 1970s, has been running out of Juba Airport since 2007 connecting Juba, Rumbek, Malakal and Wau.

The company also flies to the Sudanese capital Khartoum and Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.

(ST)