A look at southern Africa’s most baffling air disasters

A new documentary series called Flights to Nowhere will air on People°s Weather, DStv channel 180, in April.

The series looks at some of southern Africa’s most baffling air disasters and events, and is based on an e-book of the same name by veteran SA pilot and researcher Wouter Botes.

The 28-page e-book was released last year and includes information about the Rietbook tragedy as well as crashes involving other passenger jets and smaller aircraft.

Botes draws his inspiration from author Rob Marsh, who has looked into mysteries including missing persons, myths and legends, and unexplained phenomena.

About 12 years ago, Botes decided to make this his life’s work and soon made a name for himself with Doodloopspore, a series focusing on SA’s biggest unsolved mysteries.

His background as a commercial pilot prompted him to look at aviation disasters where no definitive root cause has yet been established.

“I contacted all the authorities and focused on the cases that are actually documented of missing aircraft in southern Africa,” Botes said.

“We have the Atlantic and Indian oceans on both sides, so you can imagine if somebody flies into this situation.

“There are people who simply got into a plane and were never seen again.”

He said from an aviation point of view, one knew what instruments pilots should have and what instruments they did have on board.

“You consider the weather, the fuel situation, the person’s state of mind all these things all come together to create a mystery.

“There’s always a golden thread, and there’s always a sequence of events.”

The articles that appear in the e-book were originally published by African Pilot magazine, and such was the interest that it was decided to bind them together.

“There is a big frustration that if you read one story you want to know what happens in the next story.

“With the TV series we will do a strip broadcast, in other words, one episode every single day for eight days.

Then it will be rebroadcast.”

Botes said it was apt that People°s Weather would screen the series because of the “close relationship between aviation and weather”.

Some of the air mysteries the series will look at include:

A Boeing 727-223 that was stolen at Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in Luanda, Angola, in 2003;

A helicopter flown by Ian McFarlane, a successful businessman, that crashed in the Knysna forest;

A light plane piloted by journalist Ernest Ross Christie that crashed into a block of flats in Johannesburg in 1979; and

An Embraer EMB110P1 Bandeirante that came down in a ball of flames in Germiston.