Budapest boxing club says board member and family among 11 killed in Kenya plane crash

A Budapest boxing club said on Wednesday that one of its board members and his family were among the 11 people killed in a plane crash in Kenya the day before, while en route to the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

The Vasas SC sports club said in a statement that Gyula Süllős was "a decades-long supporter" and president of its boxing programme.

All passengers on board the Cessna Caravan, eight Hungarians, two Germans and their Kenyan pilot, died when the aircraft crashed in a hilly, forested area of Kenya's coastal Kwale County, shortly after taking off from an airstrip in the town of Diani.

Kenya’s aviation department secretary, Terry Mbaika, said Wednesday that some of the bodies are yet to be recovered.

The roads leading to the crash site are not paved and the coastal side has witnessed heavy rain.

Mbaika also said the investigation would take 30 days, promising to "do everything possible" to ensure its transparency.

The airline, Mombasa Air Safari, said in a statement on Tuesday that the pilot failed to communicate upon departure and that the airport control tower tried to reach him for 30 minutes before the aircraft was located.

Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on social media on Tuesday that the Hungarian victims included two families. Two children were among the dead, he wrote.

Kenya's performance in accident investigation fell below the global average, according to the most recent safety oversight audit for the country posted on the International Civil Aviation Organisation site in 2018.