(TheObserver) – A light aircraft with eight people on board on Monday afternoon made an emergency landing at Bugoma primary school playground in Kyangwali sub-county, Hoima district.
Lt Col David Byamukama, the commander of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces 21st battalion, confirms that the plane 5X-SCO was en-route to Bunia town in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, but the pilot detected bad weather across the Lake Albert hence making an emergency landing.
The plane made an emergency landing about 30 minutes after setting off from Kajansi airstrip near Entebbe.
Col Byamukama says seven of the passengers on board were staff working with Mission Aviation Fellowship International. He however declined to mention their identities or nationalities.
He says that all the occupants were registered by the security officials who rushed to the scene. The plane later took off after about one hour of waiting as the weather normalised across the lake shared by Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rains have been persistent in many parts of Hoima district through out the morning and early afternoon hours of Monday.
Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) is a Christian organisation that provides aviation, communications, and learning technology services to more than 1,000 Christian and humanitarian agencies, as well as thousands of isolated missionaries and indigenous villagers in the world’s most remote areas.
It is not yet clear what the MAF officials were delivering or had gone to do in Bunia.
