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Allegedly suicidal pilot crashes into Matsieng Flying Club
Botswana aircraft accident

On Saturday the usual boredom of Botswana was shocked when allegedly Charl Viljoen, 37, crashed a Beechcraft King Air B200 aircraft
into the Matsieng Flying Club at the Matsieng Aerodrome in Rasesa, where moments before around 50 people were celebrating a baby shower.
Allegedly, the aircraft advanced towards Matsieng Aerodrome from the direction of Sir Seretse Khama Airport at around 6:15 pm.
It proceeded to fly past the club several times at low altitudes. On its final approach the pilot steered the aircraft into the ground floor
of the flying club building, destroying it and several adjacent cars. The pilot was confirmed dead.

Luckily nobody else was injured in the suicide crash. The pilot called a friend at the
club prior to the crash. His friend sensing that something was wrong proceeded to
evacuate everybody from the building. Reportedly the pilot had been involved in a
domestic altercation with his wife earlier that afternoon.
This is not the first such incident in Botswana. In a similar incident about 19 years ago
when Botswana airline Chris Phatswe killed himself by crashing a plane into the
Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Gaborone and hit two other aircraft.

(source: various local and international newspapers )

We went to Matsieng , to digi immortalise the accident, unfortunately the place was closed,
so we gave it a try with high powered zoom lens from far, far away.
Pictures are on www.africaphotobank.com
Good light to everybody.

03/27/2019

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