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Part of the results of the investigation into the Namibian air ambulance crash near Cape Town, South Africa, on Sunday will be made public today.
The twin-engine Cessna 441 that belonged to e-Med Rescue 24 was airlifting an 80-year-old South African patient, Gabriel le Roux, from Oranjemund to Cape Town where it crashed in the Tygerberg Nature Reserve, killing all five people on board.
Ericsson Nengola, the acting deputy permanent secretary in the department of transport, who is also the chief aircraft accidents investigator, confirmed yesterday that there has been a breakthrough in the investigations.
Nengola said the two Namibian investigators who were sent to work with the South African team are in constant contact with him.
He also said that “some information will not be available for the public domain as it will not be for their consumption”.
Those who died in the crash are three Namibians and two South Africans. The pilot, Steven Naude (53), his co-pilot, Amore Espag (23), and a paramedic, Alfred Ward (24), were Namibian citizens, while the fourth person was Le Roux’s daughter, Charmaine Koortzen (49), who was a South African staying in Namibia.
E-Med Rescue 24 chief executive officer Bertus Struwig yesterday said that he joined the team in South Africa and visited the crash site in the Tygerberg Nature Reserve.
The Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) said all aircraft approaching Cape Town International Airport at the time were placed in a holding pattern due to a technical fault with the radar.
