Anxiety as relatives of ill-fated plane cling on hope

Relatives of victims suspected to have crashed on board Ethiopian Airline, converge at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) with hopes of meeting their loved ones alive. [David Njaaga,Standard]

Isaac Lwugi kept on pacing up and down at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) international arrival section. 

Isaac was expecting his brother, Derrick Lwugi from Canada. He was to fly in at 10:25am. But by 1:47 pm he was nowhere to be seen. A notice indicated that his flight, ET302 of Ethiopia Airlines, had been cancelled. 

"We have no information till now. No one has told us anything," he says.

"We communicated yesterday (Saturday) and he said he will be arriving at JKIA about 10:20am. We were here by 10am," he says. 

He said his brother, who holds dual citizenship for both Kenya and Canada was travelling alone.

"He was coming for a visit, but his family is back in Canada," he said. "I don't want to think of the worst but if he was supposed to be here by 10:20am, and the flight that crashed is the one that was supposed to be here at that time, we can only pray,"  he said.

Isaac said he had no idea of the crash until some minutes to 10am when overheard people talking about it, and decided to check it on social media.

Until 7:30am Francis Yongi from Subukia, Nakuru County said he was in touch with his daughter, Florence Wangari Yongi, who is a nun, informing him that she was boarding a plane.

The previous night, Francis had communicated with her via WhatsApp. She said she was already in Addis Ababa and had checked in.

“She instructed us to be at the airport by 10am,” he said.

While Francis knows that she was set to arrive in Kenya around the same time as the ill-fated flight, he did not inquire about the flight number or the airline.

“That is why we are very worried,” he said.

His daughter, he said, had been deployed to work in Congo after undergoing training with a France-based catholic organisation.

He was expecting to see her for the first time after three and half years. By last evening he had not seen her.