South African Airlink Flight 8911
2009 aeroplane crash in Durban, South Africa
South African Airlink Flight 8911, a positioning flight from Durban International Airport to Pietermaritzburg Airport (both in South Africa), operated by a British Aerospace Jetstream 41, crashed into the grounds of Merebank Secondary School, Durban shortly after take-off on 24 September 2009, injuring the three occupants of the aircraft and one on the ground. The captain of the flight subsequently died of his injuries on 7 October 2009.
Flight
The flight was a positioning flight (ferry flight) from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, carrying no passengers. The three crew members consisted of Captain Allister Freeman, First officer Sonja Bierman, and a flight attendant. Captain Freeman had previously been involved in an accident in which the Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander he was flying experienced an engine failure and crashed into a house in Durban. All six people on board survived.
The aircraft, a BAe Jetstream 41 with registration ZS-NRM, had only flown 50 hours since its last service. The aircraft had been diverted to Durban from Pietermaritzburg the previous evening by bad weather.
Crash
At around 8:00 a.m. local time (06:00 UTC) on 24 September 2009, the flight departed Durban International Airport.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4698807. Authority coordinates are -29.955, 30.971. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “South African Airlink Flight 8911” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.