“We love you granny. We love you so much.” This is one of the last fond memories a Gauteng grandmother has of her two young granddaughters after she spoiled them with a “granny’s roast chicken and potatoes” at a family reunion.
Exactly a week after the Doak family reunion two Sundays ago, Joburg grandmother, Jenny Doak’s granddaughters, seven-year-old Madison and her 10-year-old sister, Alexandra, were killed.
They are the youngest victims of one of South Africa’s worst civilian aviation disasters, which has left the flying fraternity devastated.
The two sisters, who flew out to South Africa from Qatar earlier this month on a three-week holiday, were among 13 people killed when two Piaggio Albatross P166 planes crashed into a cliff face of a mountain peak in the Wolkberg mountain range outside Tzaneen in Limpopo on Sunday.
The aircraft, ZS-NJX and ZU-MMI, had been performing at the Tzaneen air show on Saturday.
The two sisters have been living with their parents in Qatar where their father, Andrew, works as an IT geographical mapping expert.
The aircraft were former South African Air Force maritime reconnaissance patrol planes, which had been bought by private aviation enthusiasts after the craft were decommissioned.
The 13 victims – including the sisters’ great uncle and aunt, Brian Gruar and Marianne Anderson, who had taken their nieces away for a “fun-filled flying weekend” – were en route from Tarentaal Aerodrome to Rand Airport in Germiston when the aircraft crashed.
Among those on board were internationally renowned aviation photographer Frans Dely; Geldenhuys’s girlfriend Marietjie de Witt; the air show’s flight director Kevin Woolacott; Linda Pierce, fiancée of African Pilot aviation magazine editor Athol Franz; pilot Peter van Oldenburg and his son, Stuar; and, Tess Spence and Louise Warden, whose husbands, Dennis and Glen, fly for SAA and BA/Comair respectively.
As Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA) continue to collect evidence from the accident scene to piece together the crash, the bodies of those who were on board will be flown by the air force to Pretoria on Wednesday for the autopsies.
The last 20 minutes of radio communications between the pilots, Gruar, and his good friend, Peter Geldenhuys, and the aerodrome are believed to hold vital clues to what might have led to the tragedy, which occurred in dense fog.
Authorities are however remaining tight-lipped about any communications, only saying that no mayday call had been made.
Doak on Tuesday tearfully recalled the last time she saw her granddaughters. “They were the happiest children ever and were wonderful little girls to have around.
“They were both extremely clever.
“The last memories I have of them are when they came to our Modderfontein home for ‘granny’s roast chicken and potatoes’.
“I have such wonderful memories of that day and was excited when they asked me to make them roast chicken,” she said.
Her husband, Norman, said the family were in a “zombie” state.
“We just can’t believe it. My son is trying to be strong, but his wife, Bronwyn, is broken. We have heard there are remains, but we don’t know what condition they are in.
“The pilots were both very experienced, but from what we heard they were flying in formation and simply flew straight into the side of a cliff. It was simply bang, bang and then it was all over.
“One minute you are flying and the next you are dead,” he said.
The Doak family are not alone in their disbelief and grief.
For Athol Franz, the loss of his fiancée, Linda Pierce, a marketing manager at Allegiance Air at Lanseria Airport whom he has known for eight years, is too much to bear.
“It is just too much. She was my best friend. We did and shared everything together. We loved each other so much. I just can’t imagine life without her.
“I can’t imagine not speaking to her ever again. Linda was the most wonderfully generous, kind hospitable person who never let anything faze her.
“She was always smiling through thick and thin no matter what.”
Franz said he had worked with many of those who were killed in the crash, “and every single one of them was a very special person”.
“The pilots who flew were two of the safest pilots I have ever flown with. They would never have taken chances and we are all gobsmacked about what went wrong,” he said.
CAA spokeswoman Phindiwe Gwebu said the aircraft, which crashed 100m apart from each other, had caught fire on impact.
Pieces of the wreckage, such as the engines, had been removed from the crash site and would be sent for forensic testing to determine the cause of the crash, she said.
“This could be instrument failure, technical complications or the weather,” she said.
Gwebu said the investigation could take up to a year, “because it involves two aircraft”.
“The bodies, which had been removed from the site, will be flown to Pretoria where the autopsies will be conducted,” she said.
South African Aeronautical Search and Rescue Centre’s Johnny Smit said most of the bodies, which had been retrieved throughout the day, had been found in the wreckage and had to be hoisted into hovering helicopters because of the difficult mountainous terrain.
“What we know so far from the way the wreckage is scattered along the very steep peak, which rises from a section of high ground, is that the planes were flying in formation very close to each other.” - Pretoria News