Kota Kinabalu: It has been 46 years since the fatal Nomad plane crash in Sembulan and for the first time in over four decades, Captain Nizam Ghandi Nathan finally had the chance to meet the “Sembulan boys” who assisted in recovering his father’s body from the debris.Nizam was only 16 and was living with his mother and siblings some 1,639 kilometres away in the peninsula when the plane crashed on June 6, 1976, killing all 11 people on board, including his father, pilot Captain Ghandi Nathan.

The Nomad aircraft crashed into the beach sand 150 metres from the boys’ water village homes in Sembulan at 3:41pm. The lads, who are now in their mid-50s, were the first to retrieve the bodies from the wreckage.