The organizers of the air rally, which is heading down Africa to Cape Town, has elected not to speak about their ordeal until the planes are safely back in the air.

Allowed to leave Gambella airport near the border with South Sudan, the 40 people involved in the rally went to a hotel to await  take off this morning.

The Ethiopian authorities maintained the aircraft from the 20s and 30s did not have the proper clearance to fly over their country.

Diplomats from Britain, the United States and Ireland appear to have smoothed up matters.

The planes have 10 more countries to cross before arriving in Cape Town on December 16.

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Their job is complicated by the Ethiopian authorities confiscating the planes and computer tables from the aviators

The vintage planes landed in Gambella near Ethiopia’s border with South Sudan.

The Ethiopian authorities kept them there, preventing them from going to their hotels.

Britain’s Foreign Office is talking to other embassies and negotiating on their behalf.

The pilots are from 10 different countries.

They include husband-and-wife teams, fathers and daughters and entire families trying  to fly more than 13 000 kms  down Africa in old aircraft that were designed for short-haul flights.

They’re planning to cross 10 countries end up in Cape Town mid-December.

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It now appears though that the biplanes from the 20s and 30s are being held in Ethiopia.

Maurice Kirk, known as  the bad boy of vintage flying , had trouble landing his Piper Cub in Khartoum.

His plane, which has no satellite tracking or a working compass, went missing on the next leg between Sudan and Ethiopia

The 72-year-old has refused requests to withdraw from the rally.

The dozen biplanes are being detained by Ethiopian authorities, a spokesman for the trip said.

They ‘ve been grounded at Gambella airport in western Ethiopia, close to the border with South Sudan.

It isn’t clear why they’ve been stoped. The pilots phones and computers have been taken by the authorities.

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Tribal clashes are blamed for the attack from South Sudan.

Ethiopia’s Communications Minister Getachew Reda says the attackers are members of South Sudan’s Murle tribe.

The victims are most from the Nuer population.

Ethiopia accommodates thousands of South Sudanese refugees.

They fled the violence that began three years ago when President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy Riek Machar, accusing him of plotting a coup.

Reda says the weekend  attackers are not thought to have any links to the South Sudanese government or rebels.

There a history of conflict in Ethiopia’s Gambella province, where the raid took place.

This is between the Nuer, Machar’s ethnic group,

and the Murle, who they accuse of cattle rustling and stealing children to raise as their own.

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