Ten passengers and a pilot have been killed in a plane crash as they flew to a tourist destination in a remote part of northern Tanzania, the safari company responsible for the aircraft said.
The group had been flying from the town of Arusha to the Senegeti National Park on Wednesday morning when an "incident" caused the Cessna Caravan plane to crash near the Empakaai Crater, Coastal Aviation said in a statement on its website.
"Obviously we are in shock. This is devastating," the company's managing director Julian Edmunds said.
The names of those killed have been suppressed pending the notification of next of kin, Coastal Aviation said.
The site of the crash is almost 500 kilometres from the country's capital of Dodoma, potentially complicating recovery efforts.
Edmunds said he flew Coastal Aviation's planes regularly and had the "utmost faith" in his crew and equipment.
"On behalf of the entire team at Coastal, we will be doing everything we can to assist the pending investigation. Nothing is more important to us than passenger safety," he said.
Coastal Aviation has operated out of the eastern city of Dar es Salaam since 1987. It has a fleet of 30 aircraft and flies to 42 destinations across Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda, according to its website.
Tanzania is a tourism hub in eastern Africa, internationally renowned for wildlife safaris and sights such as Mount Kilimanjaro.
Tourism contributed almost 20% of the country's gross domestic product in 2016, while visitor numbers doubled in the decade from 2004 to 2014.
Coastal Aviation has a fleet of 30 aircraft.
