On the morning of 6 November 2022, a Precision Air ATR 42 turboprop aircraft crashed into Lake Victoria while on approach to Bukoba Airport in northwest Tanzania, killing nineteen of the forty-three people on board. It was the deadliest commercial aviation accident in East Africa in several years, and it prompted a detailed safety investigation that identified serious failures in how the crew handled a deteriorating situation.
A Fatal Approach in Stormy Weather
Precision Air Flight PW494 had departed Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city, on a scheduled domestic service to Bukoba — a city on the western shore of Lake Victoria, close to the Ugandan border. The aircraft, an ATR 42-500 registered 5H-PWF and named “Bukoba,” was twelve years old and had been in service with Precision Air since 2010. Precision Air is one of Tanzania’s main regional carriers, connecting smaller cities and tourist destinations to the country’s international airports.
As the aircraft descended towards Bukoba Airport — a small facility built close to the lakeshore — the area was experiencing heavy rain, thunderstorms, and gusting crosswinds. At approximately 08:43 local time, the aircraft struck the surface of Lake Victoria around 500 metres short of the runway threshold, in a steep nose-down attitude. The impact was violent, but the ATR entered the water partly intact, which allowed some passengers to escape before the aircraft sank beneath the surface.
Eyewitnesses on the shoreline saw the aircraft hit the water and immediately raised the alarm. Local fishermen were among the first on the scene, pulling survivors from the lake with their boats before emergency services arrived. In total, twenty-four people survived with injuries, but nineteen — including both pilots — lost their lives. The two pilots drowned before rescue teams could reach them.
Rescue, Investigation, and Findings
The Tanzanian government mobilised rescue teams, divers, and emergency vessels to recover victims from the sunken wreckage in the days that followed. Navy divers were deployed to the crash site to assist with the recovery of those who could not be saved. President Samia Suluhu Hassan declared national mourning and called for a full investigation. Among those who lost their lives were five employees of an international non-governmental organisation travelling to Bukoba for fieldwork, and their deaths drew wide attention to the safety challenges facing regional aviation in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tanzania’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) released its final report in January 2025. Investigators found that the primary cause was pilot error: the captain had continued an unstabilised approach in deteriorating weather and had failed to respond appropriately to multiple Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) alerts. The crew did not react to the final warning until just two seconds before impact.
The investigation also noted that meteorological reporting at smaller Tanzanian airports was imprecise and may not have fully reflected how badly conditions had deteriorated over Bukoba during the final stages of the approach. Investigators recommended improvements to weather reporting at regional airports and called for better training in unstabilised approach recognition and go-around decision-making. The Precision Air crash added to the international debate about controlled flight into terrain — one of the most persistent causes of fatal commercial accidents worldwide, and a risk that safety authorities say remains significantly underaddressed at smaller regional airlines.
Key vocabulary:
- turboprop – a type of aircraft that uses a jet engine to turn a propeller, commonly used on shorter regional routes
- unstabilised approach – a landing approach that does not meet defined safety thresholds for speed, altitude, or aircraft configuration
- EGPWS (Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System) – an on-board safety system that alerts pilots when an aircraft is at risk of hitting the ground or terrain
- controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) – an accident in which an airworthy, pilot-controlled aircraft is unintentionally flown into the ground, water, or an obstacle
CEFR Level B2 / ICAO Level 5