Final radio communication before Wicknell Chivayo's crash reveals pilot's growing confusion

Somewhere above the clouds, east of Harare, a pilot was losing his bearings. And on the other end of the radio, a colleague flying just minutes away could only listen as the situation slipped further out of control.

That's the chilling account now emerging from Wicknell Chivayo's own security detail, who was travelling in a separate helicopter alongside the one carrying the businessman, his wife Lulu, and others on September 30, 2026.

It started, by all accounts, as a routine flight home.

Chivayo and Lulu had just left the site of their rural home, where they'd been inspecting ongoing construction. Forty minutes later, the aircraft carrying them would go down.

But in between, there was a sky turning hostile, and a pilot trying everything he could to find his way through it.

As both helicopters made their way back, the weather began closing in. It was bad enough that Chivayo's pilot made the call to change course entirely.

"On our way back, the weather became challenging, and our pilot suggested that we reroute and go via Bromley instead," the security aide said.

That reroute, though, didn't settle things. If anything, it was the beginning of a transmission that would grow more unsettling with every exchange.

Over the radio, the aide listened as the pilot flying Chivayo's helicopter repeated himself, almost like a man trying to convince himself as much as anyone listening.

"What I observed during the pilots' communication was that the pilot flying the boss kept saying: 'I'm in bad weather, I haven't exited the cloud,'" the aide recounted.

The pilot's last confirmed position placed him somewhere over Surrey, a detail that offered little comfort to those tracking his progress from the other aircraft.

Then came the exchange that the aide says still sits heavily with him.

His own pilot radioed in, reporting they were just ten minutes from their destination. It should have been a simple, reassuring update. Instead, the response from the other helicopter raised immediate alarm.

"The pilot flying the boss appeared confused, asking, 'Which destination?' Our pilot responded that Marondera, but no reply came. All communication with the other helicopter was lost," the aide recounted, as reported by ZimLive.

After that, silence. No further transmissions. No way of knowing, in that moment, what had happened in the clouds above.

Earlier reports had placed the number of fatalities at six. However, the aide has since stated clearly that only five people died in the crash, though no further names or identities beyond those already known have been confirmed in his account.

Air crash investigators have yet to establish the official cause of the crash.

For now, the account from Chivayo's own security detail stands as one of the clearest windows into those final, fraught minutes before the aircraft went down, a pilot battling cloud cover he couldn't escape, a radio exchange that slowly unraveled, and then, nothing.