A helicopter carrying six tourists and a pilot crashed at the foot of Mount Ololokwe in Kenya’s Samburu county on Wednesday morning, killing everyone on board.
The accident happened at 9:13 am local time, according to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, after the aircraft departed from the Loisaba wildlife reserve.
“There were 7 people on board the helicopter, one pilot and six passengers,” Fredrick Kabunge, director of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, told AFP, confirming that no one survived.
An aviation source had earlier told AFP simply, “There are no survivors.” Kabunge said the helicopter was transporting tourists for a scenic flight,
and the aircraft was making its way from the Loisaba wildlife conservancy toward the Ewaso Nyiro river when it went down.
Video shared on social media showed black smoke billowing into the sky at the crash site, and images released later by the Kenya Red Cross showed the wreckage engulfed in flames. Five of the bodies were found burnt beyond recognition, with aerial drone footage showing the aircraft completely gutted by fire.
The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority confirmed the aircraft involved was a Eurocopter EC130 B4, registration 5Y-GYM.
All seven victims have since been identified: pilot Josh Outram, along with passengers Roger Duarte, Adam Navaty, Stephen Vasconquez, Henry Parra, Michael Contugi, and Suian Suarez, the only woman on board. Authorities have not yet officially confirmed the nationalities of the six passengers, with identification and notification procedures still ongoing.
The Ministry of Roads and Transport’s Air Accident Investigation Department has taken charge of the technical investigation, though the cause of the crash has not yet been established, with authorities yet to attribute it to weather conditions, mechanical failure, pilot error, or any other specific fact. The Kenya Red Cross said response operations were ongoing as part of a multi-agency effort to access the remote crash site.
Mount Ololokwe is a popular tourist destination in Samburu County and is considered a sacred site by the Samburu people, with a summit rising some 2,000 metres above sea level; the mountain draws hikers and is a common stop for helicopter flyover tours.
The tragedy is not an isolated one for Kenya’s aviation sector — a helicopter crash in western Kenya in March killed six people, including a sitting member of parliament, while a light plane crash near the Maasai Mara last October killed 11 people, most of them foreign tourists.
