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MAUN — A second light aircraft crashed on takeoff Wednesday in Botswana's Okavango Delta but all six people onboard survived unscathed, the air charter company said.
Another failed takeoff in the same area five days ago killed eight foreigners.
Delta Air manager Kagiso Senwedi told The Associated Press that the passengers — a Namibian and four French tourists with a South African pilot — are being transported by boat from Delta Camp in Botswana's remote north to Maun town.
"They are all a bit shaken, which is understandable, and did not want to fly back," he said, adding some suffered only minor injuries.
He said the company's Cessna 206 single-engine turbo-charged aircraft crashed in a failed takeoff from Delta Camp's dirt airstrip Wednesday morning.
He had no further details: "We're communicating by radio and should know more later in the day."
A Cessna 208B operated by Moremi Air crashed shortly after takeoff Friday from Xakanaxa bush airfield and burst into a conflagration that apparently killed the British pilot and seven tourists from France, Switzerland and the UK. Rescuers who arrived quickly at the scene had to ferry buckets of water from a nearby swamp to try to douse the blaze.
Four people survived last week's crash, including a badly burned Frenchwoman who was medically evacuated for treatment to Johannesburg in neighboring South Africa.
The Ministry of Transport is investigating both crashes.
(This version corrects that C206 is turbo-charged, not turbo-prop.)
