THE German couple who perished in the plane crash near Jozini on Thursday have been identified as Doctor Otto Schofer and his girlfriend Monika Kratz.
The couple, both in their 60s, were on holiday in South Africa on a self-fly safari tour, flying a Piper PA28 Cherokee 235 four-seater fixed wing on hire from Brakpan based aviation company Sky Africa.
The Zululand Observer has established that the couple had taken off at around 11am on Thursday morning from Manzengwenya airstrip after staying for a few days at Rocktail Beach camp in Emanguzi.
According to staff at the lodge, they had arrived a day late for their three-night stay after inclement weather prevented them from flying in.
They were reportedly bound for Brakpan but crashed sometime between 12 and 1pm near Madonela, a rural area approximately 30 kilometres from Jozini, less than 70km from where they took off.
The wreckage of the plane was scattered over an area of approximately 2km.
A witness who saw the plane crash told the ZO he had seen the aircraft pass over.
‘Suddenly it made a very loud noise and went straight up,’ he said.
‘Then it came down, spiralling, and pieces started breaking off.’
The main fuselage of the plane smashed into the ground just meters from a homestead and caught fire.
Both Schofer and Kratz were declared dead on scene.
Members of Empangeni K9 Search and Rescue as well as a forensic investigator of the Local Criminal Records Centre were taken by police helicopter to the scene on Thursday afternoon.
Investigation launched
By Friday morning, South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) investigators had arrived on scene to begin the extensive probe to determine the cause of the crash.
‘The SACAA wishes to point out that while the investigation will commence immediately, investigations often vary in complexity and may take months to complete,’ said spokesman Kabelo Ledwaba after being asked to provide more details about the victims and the crash.
He said the completion of the investigation would be marked by the release of a final accident report which would contain probable cause.
Two qualified commercial pilots, who spoke on condition of anonymity, both agreed that the description of the events could be seen as the result of an in-flight breakup of the aircraft after stress induced from a heightened airspeed as a result of loss of control.
Both pilots also agreed that weather conditions, which were cloudy on the day, could have contributed to the cause of the crash, but emphasised this was pure speculation at this stage.
Ledwaba would not comment on reports that another plane belonging to the same company had crashed earlier this year.
The plane went down on 3 February in Benoni shortly after take-off, killing the owner of Sky Africa Karl Finatzer and an Austrian couple flying with him.
‘Sky Africa chooses not to comment until the SACAA has finalised its investigation,’ Clemens Maay, an operations manager at Sky Africa, said on Friday.
The ZO has established contact with relatives in Germany, who said they would speak to the media at a later stage.
Dr Schofer headed up the St Joseph Kohlhof Children’s Hospital paediatric surgery unit in Neunkirchen until his retirement in August last year.
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