Aircraft carrying Malawi's Vice President Saulos Klaus Chilima goes missing
Malawi's Vice President Saulos Klaus Chilima arrives at a polling station in Lilongwe, Malawi May 21, 2019.
A plane carrying Malawi's Vice President, Saulos Klaus Chilima, has gone missing, and efforts by Malawian aviation authorities to contact the aircraft have been unsuccessful since Monday morning.
Mr Chilima was travelling with nine other passengers.
The plane, a Malawi Defence Force aircraft, left Lilongwe at 9.17am but failed to make its scheduled landing at Mzuzu International Airport at 10.02am, according to a statement from the President's office.
After noticing that the flight's radar had gone off, the commander of the Malawi Defence Force, General Valentino Phiri, informed the country's head of state, Lazarus Chakwera, of the incident.
The update prompted President Chakwera to cancel his planned departure to the Bahamas and ordered all regional and national authorities to launch an immediate search and rescue operation to locate the aircraft.
Members of the public have been urged to remain calm, avoid any misinformation and await further communication from the authorities.
"The public will be kept informed of any developments in the situation as facts are established," the statement concluded.
The development comes after the plane carrying Iran's immediate past president and foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, and six others went missing near the border with Azerbaijan on May 19, 2024.
The following day, Iranian authorities confirmed that the plane, a US-built twin-engine Bell 212, had crashed in the mountainous and forested region of the country's East Azerbaijan province, killing everyone on board.
Just a month before President Raisi's untimely death, Kenya lost its military chief, General Francis Ogolla, who died after the flight they were on crashed at Elgeyo-Marakwet at around 14:20 on April 18.
General Ogolla, the country's most senior military officer, was in the helicopter with 11 other military personnel. Only two survived.
The Kenyan Air Force has dispatched an aerial investigation team to determine the cause of the crash.
