{"id":30616,"date":"2016-11-26T03:37:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/freed-africa-vintage-air-rally-pilots-land-kenya\/"},"modified":"2016-11-26T03:37:40","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:37:40","slug":"freed-africa-vintage-air-rally-pilots-land-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/freed-africa-vintage-air-rally-pilots-land-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Freed Africa vintage air rally pilots land Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{A group of international pilots taking part in a vintage plane rally have landed in Kenya after being freed from detention in Ethiopia, organisers say.}<\/p>\n<p>About 20 aircraft had been impounded at the airport in Gambela, western Ethiopia, after crossing &#8220;illegally&#8221; into the country from Sudan.<\/p>\n<p>But the aviators, on a mission to travel the length of Africa, resumed their journey on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>One of the released pilots failed to arrive at the destination.<\/p>\n<p>British pilot Maurice Kirk, 72, had already been reported missing once but was later found to be among the pilots detained in Ethiopia.<\/p>\n<p>In a Facebook post, Vintage Air Rally said: &#8220;For the second time in two flights, Maurice is a no show. We have launched (again) an overdue aircraft process (now Kenyan rather than Ethiopian).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Vintage Air Rally spokesman Jeremy Martin told the BBC that Mr Kirk was &#8220;officially off the rally but since we know he&#8217;s out there we can&#8217;t leave him&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>{{Diplomatic efforts}}<\/p>\n<p>The head of Ethiopia&#8217;s civil aviation authority, Wosenyele Hungnall, told the BBC that the aircraft had crossed illegally into Ethiopian airspace from Sudan.<\/p>\n<p>Ethiopia is currently under a state of emergency following a recent upsurge in violent attacks, and there is a military presence in Gambela because of tensions with neighbouring South Sudan.<\/p>\n<p>The rally was suspended while diplomats tried to secure the release of the pilots and crews.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Vintage Air Rally said the pilots were free to continue their journey to South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Participants, from 13 different countries, are attempting to cover 13,000km (8,000 miles) using biplanes built between the 1920s and 1940s, and support aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>The planes took off for Cape Town from the Greek island of Crete on 12 November.<\/p>\n<p>The aviators aim to cross 10 countries while making 37 stops in the month-long journey.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-16663 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_92651204_vintage.jpg\" alt=\"The vintage planes had taken off from Sudan for the three-hour flight into Ethiopia\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{A group of international pilots taking part in a vintage plane rally have landed in Kenya after being freed from detention in Ethiopia, organisers say.} About 20 aircraft had been impounded at the airport in Gambela, western Ethiopia, after crossing &#8220;illegally&#8221; into the country from Sudan. But the aviators, on a mission to travel the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30616"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30616"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}