A small aircraft carrying oil workers in South Sudan’s Unity State crashed on Wednesday, killing 20 people, an official said.
The plane crashed at the Unity oilfield airport on Wednesday morning as it was heading to the capital Juba, said Gatwech Bipal, Unity State’s information minister.
Bipal said the passengers were oil workers of the Greater Pioneer Operating Company (GPOC), a consortium that includes China National Petroleum Corporation and state-owned Nile Petroleum Corporation.
He said among the dead were two Chinese nationals and one Indian. Bipal gave no more details on the circumstances that led to the crash. Media reports had initially put the death toll at 18 but Bipal told Reuters two survivors had later died. One person survived. Several air crashes have occurred in war-torn South Sudan in recent years.
In September 2018, at least 19 people died when a small aircraft carrying passengers from the capital Juba to the city of Yirol crashed. In 2015, dozens of people were killed when a Russian-built cargo plane with passengers on board crashed after taking off from the airport in the capital Juba.
This is what one reckons it is an African warning if South Sudan Airways is killing air passengers left, right and center. South Sudan like many other African countries seem to think that with their dodgy airport infrastructure and aviation services they are going to continue to expand modern international air transport any how.
How many lives are likely to get lost before these countries get to real professional duties of flying aeroplanes like what Ethiopian airways seems to be doing. Endemic corruption and free ticketing especially on the part of government air passangers are some of the many problems of flying aeroplanes on the continent of Africa.
That was not a South Sudanese aircraft. It was a Ugandan-registered aircraft flown by Ugandan-licensed pilots.