Vintage Plane Crashes in South Africa's Pretoria; 1 Dead, 20 Injured

Pretoria, July 10: At least one was dead and 20 were left injured, including some critical, after a vintage plane crashed in the South African capital Pretoria on its trial run. The victims have been rushed to the nearest medical facility. Among those critical, include the aircraft pilot.

The Convair plane, built back in 1954, was set to be flown to Netherland's Lelystad city, where it was scheduled to be permanently stationed at the Aviodrome air museum.

The accident was reported on Monday evening after the pilot along with 21 on board took a trial run. The plane developed a technical snag and landed with velocity back on the ground minutes after takeoff.

“Medics from ER24 and other services are at the scene of a plane crash at Wonderboom in Pretoria,” Russell Meiring, spokesman for the ER24 medical service, said.

Jurgen Kotze, chief operating officer for Emer-G-Med services, said the crash was near Wonderboom airport on the Moloto Road. “They are busy treating one of the pilots ... and he will be airlifted to a Netcare hospital,” he said.

“Some patients have been transferred already and some of them are still on scene, Kotze added.

The Aviodrome aerospace, in its Facebook post, expressed shock and disappointment over the plane crash. The museum said the plane was a rare vintage collection built by US in 1954. It had the capacity of carrying 44 passengers.

The plane was built by Martin’s Air Charter, but no information is available about the company.

Later in the month, it was expected to fly to the Netherlands via east Africa, through Egypt, Croatia, Austria.

(With PTI inputs)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 10, 2018 11:08 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).