According to reliable sources, Mary Chilima was supposed to accompany the Vice President but she declined at the last minute because she had examinations to take.
Saulos Chilima, also did not want to travel but was pushed by some of his friends because Ralph Kasambara was a close friend.
He took a plane so that he could return in time to see off the President. Chilima returned home yesterday on Sunday and was very tired.
A good number of his close friends advised him not to travel because he was exhausted after a long flight.
The search is currently underway despite the bad weather in Chikangawa which is posing a challenge.
Malawi’s vice president, Saulos Chilima, was among 10 people killed when a small military plane crashed in a mountainous region in the north of the country, the the president said Tuesday. Chilima was 51.
President Lazarus Chakwera announced in a live address on state television that the wreckage of the plane had been located after a search of more than a day in thick forests and hilly terrain near the northern city of Mzuzu. Chakwera said there were no survivors of the crash.
Former first lady Shanil Dzimbiri, the ex-wife of former President Bakili Muluzi, was also on the plane, the president had said. There were seven passengers and three military crew members onboard.
The group was traveling to Mzuzu to attend the funeral of a former government minister. Chilima had just returned from an official visit to South Korea on Sunday.
Hundreds of soldiers, police officers and forest rangers had been searching for the plane after it went missing Monday morning while making the 45-minute flight from the southern African nation’s capital, Lilongwe, to Mzuzu, around 370 kilometers (230 miles) to the north.
Air traffic controllers told the plane not to attempt a landing at Mzuzu’s airport because of bad weather and poor visibility and asked it to turn back to Lilongwe, Chakwera said in an address late Monday night. Air traffic control then lost contact with the aircraft and it disappeared from radar, he said.
The president described the aircraft as a small, propeller driven plane operated by the Malawian armed forces. The tail number he provided shows it is a Dornier 228-type twin propeller plane that was delivered to the Malawian army in 1988, according to the ch-aviation website that tracks aircraft information.
