The army yesterday said it had instituted a team to investigate the plane crash that killed Maj Naome Karungi and her co-pilot, Cadet Pilot Benon Wakalo, on Tuesday.
“We started investigations and we will continue to establish the cause of the crash. Right now, our officers are doing their best to find out [the cause],” the army spokesperson, Brig Richard Karemire, told Daily Monitor yesterday.
The Jet Ranger AF302 came down at around 12pm in Butambala District as the two soldiers flew back to Entebbe from Mubende District where they had gone for an air force training exercise.
Karungi was supervising Wakalo who hoped to rise through the ranks and probably become a captain like her.
Karungi was born in December 1978 in Akajumbura, Nyakahita in Kiruhura District while Wakalo was from Manafa District. Karungi attended Kasambya Primary School in Lyantonde, before joining Kinoni Girls Secondary School in Mbarara District, now Rwampara.
She joined Makerere University in 1999 where she did a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and graduated in 2002. She briefly worked with Kampala City Council, now Kampala Capital City Authority.
Karungi later joined the army in 2004. After the military training, she passed the aptitude tests to qualify for a course at Soroti Flying School. The interview was conducted by the Civil Aviation Authority on behalf of the air force.
In 2005, Karungi went to Soroti Flying School where she acquired a Pilot Private Licence. With this qualification, she could fly planes with fixed wings.
But when she went to the airbase, she opted to fly jet rangers, the work she had done until Tuesday. Her friends and workmates described her as a “brilliant” woman who was very strong and full of passion when it came to work.
“She gave her life to the military. She was full of passion and compromised her social life to serve the military,” said an air force flight engineer who did not want to be named because he is not authorised to talk to the media.
Sources say she had accumulated more than 2,000 flight hours, a reason she was promoted to captain in 2018. Karungi was supposed to go the US for an instructors’ course so as to be able to train other pilots.
Brig Karemire said they were working out burial arrangements for the deceased. “There is no clear programme as yet but we are in touch with the families of the deceased and from that, we shall come up with necessary arrangements,” he said.
But a close family friend said there will be prayers for Karungi at Resurrection of Jesus Church in Bugolobi. For Wakalo, there were no details about his burial arrangements.
