New inquiry into VP’s fatal plane crash

Malawi’s Parliament has announced plans to exhume the remains of former Vice-President Saulos Chilima and eight others who died in a June 2024 military aircraft crash in northern Malawi. The move forms part of a renewed parliamentary inquiry into the disaster that killed all nine people on board a Dornier 228 aircraft operated by the Malawi Defence Force. The Mail & Guardian reports that the exhumations would allow forensic pathologists to conduct post-mortem examinations that were not carried out when the victims’ bodies were recovered in 2024. The parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating the crash said the delayed autopsies would be part of three parallel investigative processes expected to begin in mid-May. The decision has raised questions among aviation safety specialists about why the examinations were not conducted immediately after the bodies were recovered. The parliamentary inquiry follows two previous investigations that attempted to establish the cause of the crash. A government-appointed commission of inquiry concluded in December 2024 that poor weather was the primary factor behind the accident. A separate technical report released in June last year by Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation reached similar conclusions, attributing the crash to the crew’s decision to continue operating in adverse weather at low altitude.