An Irish author killed in the Libya plane crash was flying to Britain to sign a book deal after being delayed by the volcanic ash cloud, it was revealed today.
Bree O’Mara (42), from South Africa, missed the London Book Fair last month because of the airspace shutdown and put off her trip until this week.
She had been due to meet publishers to pen a contract for her latest novel, Nigel Watson, Superhero, based in London where she used to live.
She was among 93 passengers and 11 crew on the Airbus A330 Afriqiyah Airlines flight 8U771, which had flown from Johannesburg and crashed short of the runway at Tripoli airport. A nine-year-old Dutch boy was the sole survivor and was recovering in a Tripoli hospital today.
The airline said 58 Dutch passengers, six South Africans, two Britons, two Libyans, two Austrians, one German, one French national and one Zimbabwean were also on board.
Publisher Kerrin Cocks, director of 30 Degrees South Publishers, who secured the writer’s first book deal, said Ms O’Mara lived and wrote to enjoy the lighter side of life.
“Bree really was the most incredible person,” she said. “From the first moment we met her she had this incredible red hair and this personality to match it. She supported every event we did. She was really this incredible person and she was funny. She liked to look at the lighter side of life.”
Ms O'Mara secured a book deal with 30 Degrees South after winning a readers' choice prize in South Africa's Citizen newspaper.
She lived in Hartbeespoort Dam, in South Africa’s North West Province with her chef husband, Christopher Leach. Born in Durban, it is understood she was hugely proud of her Irish roots and travelled on an Irish passport. Her mother was Irish and eloped to Africa with her father, which the writer claimed on her website “caused an outrage in the Emerald Isle”.
The writer worked for many years as a flight attendant in the Middle East before moving to London in the 1990s to work in film production. She returned to South Africa in the last few years after spending most of 2004 living with Masai tribes in Tanzania, recording their way of life and previously secret rituals.
“She really had an adventurous way of life,” Ms Cocks said.
The Dutch foreign affairs ministry said the sole survivor of the crash was a nine-year-old boy named Ruben from Tilburg. "He is doing reasonably well considering the circumstances," the ministry said in a statement.
He had suffered leg fractures but was in a stable condition, doctors at a Tripoli hospital said.
The boy's grandmother told Dutch newspaper Brabants Dagblad that he was travelling with his 11-year-old brother Enzo and parents Trudy and Patrick van Assouw and had been on a safari in South Africa.
The foreign ministry said an aunt and uncle had landed in Tripoli and would quickly visit Ruben at the hospital. The plane also carried six Dutch officials, including specialists to identify people or investigate plane crashes.