“Safe skies!” Fiona Ndila Mutuku told her husband, Peter Omondi Odhiambo, a pilot at Precision Air, based in Tanzania in her last phone conversation with him at 5.53 am on Sunday, 6. She had said this to Peter hundreds of times before. “Thanks, travel safely too,” he replied.
He asked about their son, and they chatted about other domestic stuff. They had spoken the night before, so she knew he was to fly to Bukoba, while he knew she was traveling to Mtito Andei.
When she landed at Mtito Andei at 10.45 am, she checked her social media and read about a Precision Air plane that had crashed into Lake Victoria as it attempted to land in bad weather.
The accident happened at 8.53 am, just 100 meters shy of the Bukoba airport runway. Initial reports said there were no casualties. Heart beating fast, she checked again to confirm where the flight was headed. When she saw that it was Bukoba, her heart sank.
Then she started making calls frantically. First to Peter’s older brother Alex Odhiambo. No, he had not heard anything. Next, she called his sister Gertrude Achieng, and then his friends, most of whom are pilots. None of them had any information on the fate of the pilots.
She checked her husband’s WhatsApp and saw his ‘last checked’ was the time they spoke earlier. It must be hectic, what with rescue efforts, and maybe he didn’t have his phone, she comforted herself.
