The year 2024 has witnessed the passing of several prominent people across the world, albeit via plane crashes.
Saulos Chilima, the Vice President of Malawi is the latest prominent individual in the world to be a victim of air accident.
Aside Chilima, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Nigerian billionaire Herbert Wigwe, NASA astronaut William Anders and Hollywood actor Christian Oliver all fell to death’s sting by air crashes.
Explore details of their demise below
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Prominent world people killed by plane crash in 2024
1. Malawi’s Vice President, Saulos Chilima
Saulos Chilima, the 51-year-old vice president of Malawi died along with nine other passengers who were on board q airplane that went missing on Monday, June 10.
Chilima’s death was officially annoujced by the country’s President Lazarus Chakwera on Tuesday, June 11.
The aircraft went missing after it failed to land at the Mzuzu International Airport, about 380 km (240 miles) to the north of the capital Lilongwe.
2. Herbert Wigwe, Wife, Son
Former Access Bank Holding CEO, Herbert Wigwe died on February 10, 2024 as apart of victims of a crash.
Wigwe died when a helicopter transporting him and five others crashed in California, United States of America. There were no survivors.
The chopper was headed to Las Vegas when it crashed near a border city between Nevada and California on Friday night at about 10pm.
The United States government confirmed the crash as well as the death of all on board.
His wife, Chizoba and son were also on board the helicopter when it crashed.
3. Iran President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hoessein Amir-Abdollahian
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were killed in a helicopter crash on May 19, 2024.
The crash also claimed the lives of six other people, who were members of the entourage and crew, when the helicopter crashed in the north of the country.
Raisi was heading to the city of Tabriz, in the north-west of Iran, after returning from a dam opening ceremony on the Azerbaijan border.
President Raisi was a hardline cleric close to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
4. NASA Astronaut William Anders
William Anders, a NASA astronaut who was part of the 1968 Apollo 8 crew who were the first three people to orbit the moon, has died in a plane crash in Washington state, according to his son, Gregory Anders. He was 90 years old.
My “dad passed in an aircraft incident in the San Juan Islands,” Anders told CNN Friday evening. “The family is devastated and grieving the loss of a great pilot,” he added.
The San Juan County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release an aircraft went down off the coast of Jones Island.
William Anders, born on October 17, 1933, in Hong Kong, graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1955 and after being commissioned in the US Air Force, he earned his pilot’s wings the following year, according to the US Naval Academy’s website.
Anders served as a fighter pilot in all-weather interception squadrons of the Air Defense Command in California and Iceland, according to NASA and the US Naval Academy.
5. Hollywood’s Christian Oliver and two daughters
American actor Christian Oliver and his two daughters died in the Caribbean after the aircraft they were traveling in “plummeted into the ocean” moments after takeoff from an island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force (RSVGPF) said the small, one-engine aircraft owned and piloted by Robert Sachs, a resident of the island of Bequia, crashed into the sea about one nautical mile west of the island of Petit Nevis around midday Thursday.
“The aircraft went airborne from the J.F. Mitchell Airport in Paget Farm about 12:11 p.m. for St. Lucia as its final destination. Moments after taking off, the aircraft experienced difficulties and plummeted into the ocean,” police said in a Facebook post.
Police identified the victims as Sachs and his three passengers onboard: Christian Klepser and his daughters, Madita, 12, and Annik, 10
Klepser, who goes by the stage name Christian Oliver according to media reports, has “worked with the likes of Steven Soderbergh in The Good German opposite Cate Blanchett and George Clooney, Brian Singer and Tom Cruise in Valkyrie and the Wachowski’s in Speed Racer and Sense8,” according to his website.
The actor also appeared in a 1995 film adaptation of the popular book series, “The Baby-Sitters Club.”
