By Moses Michira

NAIROBI, KENYA: The chopper that killed former Internal Security minister George Saitoti and five others was overloaded, causing the pilot to lose control and subsequently crashing.

The report on the cause of the air accident released yesterday said the weight of the six occupants was estimated at 2,261kgs, which breached the maximum capacity by 11kgs, making it a probable cause of the crash.

Official records on the flight, that lasted just over ten minutes, also indicated that there was more weight on the left-hand side of the chopper, likely because the heavier passengers had chosen to sit on the same side.

The uneven weight distribution complicated the balance and centre of gravity for the France-built Eurocopter as it took off from Wilson Airport, Nairobi.

Justice Kalpana Rawal, who headed the commission of inquiry into the air accident, reported that the overloaded chopper was also flying in bad weather that compromised the pilot’s visibility.

Gross weight

“Such high gross weight condition in combination with other factors is capable of causing aircraft control difficulties,” read part of the report by the commission headed by Justice Rawal, the Deputy Chief Justice-designate. Captain Luke Oyugi, the co-pilot who was seated on the left, weighed 97kgs, while Nancy Gituanja weighed 64.

However, the individual weights of Prof Saitoti, his deputy Orwa Ojode and their bodyguards were not captured. But the report estimates each to have weighed 80kgs, and that the overload ought to have been noted prior to dispatch of the chopper had the appropriate procedure been followed.

Information on the final three minutes of the flight indicated that the police chopper followed an erratic path, making a sudden left turn amid an excessive bank before another sharp left turn and then an unprecedented dip with the plane nose down.

Steep descent

The final flight trajectory indicated a very steep descent path at very high speed before the eventual crash upon which the chopper is thought to have disintegrated on impact with a fire ensuing. 

In support of the poor visibility theory, several eyewitnesses told the Justice Rawal commission that they saw the chopper flying very low and could read its registration number.

One witness even claimed that the chopper hit a treetop on his farm, moments before it crashed in a nearby plantation at around 8.42am.

Another pilot who had taken off from the same airport at 8am headed to Lewa Conservancy told the Rawal-led commission that there was a sudden change in cloud density and height that morning, forcing him to detour and make an emergency landing at the Windsor Hotel in Ridgeways area.

“The witnesses reported that there was mist, fog and drizzle in the area at the time and shortly after they heard the sound of a crash.”

Despite the bad weather and poor visibility, the commission ruled out the possibility of the pilots having flown into a terrain, like a hillside, given that the accident scene was largely flat albeit with a thick forest of eucalyptus.

The chopper took off from Wilson Airport at 8.30am on Sunday morning after clearance by ground control that handed it over to the control tower after the chopper attained the requisite flying height.

Ten minutes after take-off, the chopper is reported to have disappeared from the radar just as it was about to be taken over by the radar at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Captain Oyugi, who had in the ten minutes communicated with the control tower at Wilson Airport, went silent.

But the flight path, which was retraced by Google, shows that the chopper had taken an about-turn and was actually heading back on its original flight path, presumably to land at its origin, Wilson Airport.

Eyewitnesses who were first to arrive at the scene of the accident reported that there was a huge fire immediately after the crash, which left the chopper and its passengers badly dismembered.

Judge Rawal conceded that the commission could not fully rule out that passengers had died of carbon monoxide poisoning because toxicology analysis carried out on Capt Oyugi’s body found deadly levels of the poisonous gas in his body.

Pathologists cross-examined at the inquiry said it was likely that Capt Oyugi had actually inhaled the poisonous gas within the cabin, suggesting that he could have died before impact.

Two other bodies examined, Prof Saitoti’s and Capt Gituanja’s, however returned negative results for carbon monoxide.

Postmortem analysis

The police and Government chemist involved in the postmortem analysis inexplicably left out the carbon monoxide results, raising questions on their professionalism in the collection of possible leads to the cause of death.

Carbon monoxide tests were never run on the three other bodies, even after gas poisoning emerging as a probable cause of death given the results from Capt Oyugi’s body.

Lawyers and pathologists for the Saitoti family told the inquiry that all the bodies had a cherry-pink discolouration, which is a strong indicator of poisoning. These were, however, countered at the inquiry.

Judge Rawal also reported that the extensive damage caused by the fire had severely burnt other possible leads, ending with burns and multiple injuries as the only causes of death for the six.