Part 22: Botswana

2 0 0
                                        

This plane crash takes us to the South African country of Botswana, which is located next to the following countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.

WARNING OF A PLANE CRASH AND SUICIDE BY PILOT

Pictured above is a similar type of aircraft involved in this accident

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

Pictured above is a similar type of aircraft involved in this accident.

The 1999 Air Botswana incident occurred when Chris Phatswe, who was a Botswana airline pilot, killed himself by crashing a plane into the airport apron and a group of aircraft as the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport (IATA: GBE, ICAO: FBSK) in Gaborone, Botswana, he was the only casualty in the crash, however his actions effectively crippled operations for Air Botswana (They are still flying but it took awhile for them to recover).

On the 11th of October 1999, Chris commandeered an Aérospatiale ATR 42- 320 aircraft, registered as Alpha 2- Alpha Bravo Bravo (A2-ABB), he took it from the Air Botswana section of the term Ian at the airport and taxied out to the runway and then he took off from the airport.

The airport was evacuated as a precaution, Chris threatened to crash the plane into an Air Botswana building saying he had a grudge with the airliner management.

After more than two hours in the air circling the airport and after officials changed Chris's mind, after Chris was told people were in the Air Botswana building, shortly after being put through to Khama ATC, the ATR- 42 began to run out of fuel, so Chris carried out a successful landing but instead of surrendering to airport security, he proceeded to take the aircraft towards the apron at a high speed, slamming the stolen plane into two other ATR- 42's on the ramp, all three aircraft were destroyed in a fiery crash, the three planes were the only operational aircraft at the time for the Air Botswana fleet; a fourth plane, a BAE- 146, was grounded with technical trouble at the time, Chris's actions effectively crippled operations for the Air Botswana fleet.

The summary of the crash was aircraft theft and suicide by pilot.

Below is a video explains what happened that day, video credit goes to The Flight Channel on Youtube.

Plane crashes from around the worldWhere stories live. Discover now