According to Tanzania’s prime minister, a passenger plane crashed into Lake Victoria on Sunday morning as it attempted to land at a local airfield, killing at least 19 passengers.
According to the state-run Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC), Precision Air’s flight PW494 crashed into the lake during storms and torrential rain.
Rescuers in boats sped to the nearly submerged wreckage to free trapped people, according to local officials.
In the lakeside city of Bukoba, which is close to the crash site, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa told reporters, “All Tanzanians join you in mourning these 19 persons… who have lost their lives.”
He noted that investigators were still probing what transpired.
Leaving Tanzania’s commercial hub of Dar es Salaam, the aircraft “crash-landed” at Bukoba airport around 8:53 a.m. (0553 GMT), according to a statement from Precision Air, the country’s largest privately owned airline.
The airline also stated that there were four crew members and 39 passengers on board the aircraft. It stated that 26 of the 43 passengers had been saved.
Calls to airline representatives for more information went unanswered, and the gap in the numbers could not be immediately explained.
When the plane neared the airport in low visibility, a witness informed TBC that he noticed it flying erratically and that it attempted to turn for the airport but missed and crashed into a lake.
Videos and images shared on social media showed the jet almost completely submerged in Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, with only its green and brown tail visible above the surface.
Numerous locals were seen in the broadcaster’s and viewers’ footage standing along the shore and wading into the shallow waves to try to assist in bringing the airplane closer to the shore with ropes.
According to Tanzania’s Kagera region chief administrator Albert Chalamila, rescue personnel made immediate contact with the pilots in the cockpit. The pilots may have passed away, the prime minister later added.
The aircraft, according to Precision Air, is an ATR42-500. An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the Franco-Italian manufacturer ATR.
