Seven people, including game hunters from the French island of Reunion, were killed when their light aircraft crashed near the airport of Madagascar's capital, police said Tuesday.
The Piper Navajo PA 31 plane was approaching Antananarivo when the pilot reported problems first in one engine, then in the second, before it crashed about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the capital, pilots said late Monday.
Those who died were six French people of Chinese origin from Reunion who were in Madagascar for a long weekend at the end of the hunting season, with their guide, a Russian-born Frenchman close to the charity SOS Villages d'Enfants (SOS Children's Villages).
One of the wild duck and boar hunters had been flying the plane, according to para-military gendarmerie police who went to the crash site late Monday.
The aircraft had been chartered from a Reunion transport firm by a group of businessmen.
The plane crash was witnessed by children looking after flocks of zebu and the wreckage was later spotted amid rice paddies by the crew of a privately operated helicopter who said they thought nobody had survived.
Private pilots said the plane almost certainly ran out of fuel.
Some expressed anger at what they described as the unreliable way in which airports are supplied by the firm Total Aviation Madagascar. It has enjoyed a monopoly since the state hydrocarbons company Solima was privatised as part of an ongoing economic liberalisation programme.
The plane hit the ground in only about five minutes' flying time from the single runway at the international Antananarivo-Ivato airport.
Madagascan pilots, noting the growth in private aviation on the large Indian Ocean island, have criticised what they see as a lack of adequate accident search and rescue facilities, navigational aides and air traffic surveillance.
The helicopter whose crew found the crashed plane belongs to a company owned by President Dider Ratsiraka's son -- ANTANANARIVO (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
