CANDICE BAILEY, SHAUN SMILLIE, SHAIN GERMANER, BOTHO MOLOSANKWE AND MOLOKO MOLOTO
Athol Franz lit a candle in the hope that a loved one and the other missing passengers would make it home alive as the search for two Albatross planes entered a second day.
Franz’s fiancée, Linda Pierce, was a passenger on one of those planes.
But last night, search-and-rescue personnel called off the hunt as night fell on the remote mountains not far from Tzaneen, Limpopo.
The searchers and rescuers, who include the SANDF, police, firefighters, sniffer dogs and volunteers, will resume looking for what is believed to be between 12 and 14 people today. An official passenger list has yet to be released.
The planes disappeared after taking off from Tarentaal Airfield, outside Tzaneen, at 9.30am on Sunday, heading to Rand Airport in Germiston after last weekend’s airshow in the town. Contact was lost half an hour into the flight.
For friends and relatives of missing passengers and crew, it has been an anxious wait for news. At the Henley Air Centre at Rand Airport, relatives gathered. Henley Air director Johan Coetzee said families were being encouraged to get as much rest as possible.
“They’re absolutely distraught, they’re tired and they haven’t slept. The problem is, they still have no information on their relatives, and there’s no chance for closure,” he said.
Y
esterday, Franz described how, after attending the Tzaneen airshow, he and his fiancée flew home to Joburg on Sunday on separate planes.
Pierce, on board one of the Albatrosses, took off first. An hour later, Franz took off in a formation of three Yak 52s.
“This is when I became concerned, because I tried to call Linda (my fiancée), who was a passenger on one of the two Albatrosses. I also tried to call other people who I knew were on this flight back to Johannesburg – no answers to any of my calls,” he said, fearing the worst.
“As I write this newsletter many hours later and after my eyes have become red with crying, I am devastated that there is a possibility that the two Albatrosses either collided in the turbulent air on the lee side of the mountains or that they flew into the mountains whilst (flying through) a cloud.”
Friends and family gathered in Tzaneen included pilot Nigel Hopkins, who was supporting his friend and colleague, Dennis Spence, last night.
Spence’s wife Tess was on one of the missing aircraft.
At first it was incorrectly reported in The Star that Dennis was on one of the planes. The couple have a daughter, Angela, who is studying abroad. According to posts on a social networking site, she arrived home on Thursday.
In one of her mother’s last posts on Facebook before the plane disappeared, she posted: “thanks for dinner!! x x lovely to have you home for one day.”
Last night, Hopkins said: “We haven’t found anything. The weather is too bad.”
There were eight helicopters searching the area, said Hopkins, including military, police and civilian aircraft.
Near Tzaneen, two witnesses came forward claiming they had seen the planes shortly before they crashed.
Alpheus Sebela said he was searching for his cattle in Ga-Maake outside Tzaneen when two planes flew over him. He said they were flying low, behind each other. The weather was misty and thick fog had engulfed the mountains.
“I heard a bang just after they flew past me,” he said.
Mackson Maake confirmed they had been flying low, but was not sure if they had crashed. “They were flying behind each other,” said Maake.
Bad weather has hampered the search since it was launched. It was delayed by about eight hours yesterday.