PARAMARIBO--Two men died and three were injured Friday morning, when a small aircraft crashed in the village of Apura in southwestern Suriname.
The dead have been identified as pilot Prem Anand Jhauw and businessman Cesare Calor. The other passengers are foreign tourists; it is not yet known what their names are and which nationalities they hold. Suffering injuries ranging from a broken collar bone to a few bruises, they have been taken to a nearby medical centre for treatment.
Police say the plane, a privately owned Cessna 206, crashed while trying to land at the airstrip in Apura. The pilot was taking Calor and the tourists on what was most likely supposed to be a fishing trip to the game rich West Suriname area. Calor was an avid sports-fisherman who owned Fishfinder, an outdoor sports business in Paramaribo. He regularly took tourists on fishing trips in the interior.
The Cesna had left the Zorg en Hoop airport in Paramaribo around 8:45am and was expected to land at the Apura airstrip at 10:12am. Civil aviation authorities say they last had contact with the pilot at 9:56am.
“I heard the plane approaching and it passed really low over my house. But it did not touch down then. It went around, came back in approach, but then we heard something crash. The plane went down at about 400 meters distance from the airport. We ran to it and that’s when we saw that the pilot and the other man in the front seat were dead; the men in the back were injured,” said a villager who witnessed the crash.
Police and a team from the civil aviation authority CASAS immediately travelled to the village to carry out an investigation into the accident.
Noteworthy is that pilot Prem Anand Jhauw is the younger brother of pilot Amichand Jhauw whose career in the aviation business has seen several fatal plane crashes. In 2010 and 2014 two Russian-made aircraft of his Blue Wing commuter airline crashed in the hinterland, killing all passengers and crew; his wife had been the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft that crashed in 2014. Amichand Jhauw only recently started his latest venture, Fly All Ways airline.
The Cessna that the younger Jhauw was flying in on Friday, was owned by businessman Nauransing Raghoebarsingh, who runs a quarry near Apura.
