20 dead in vintage plane crash in Swiss Alps
BERLIN — A vintage propeller plane plunged near-vertically into a Swiss mountain, killing all 20 people on board as they returned from a two-day trip to Switzerland, investigators said Sunday.
The Junkers Ju-52 plane, operated by small Swiss company Ju-Air, went down Saturday on the Piz Segnas mountain above the Alpine resort of Flims, at an altitude of 8,330 feet.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash, and officials said they expect a complex investigation given that the 79-yearold plane was not equipped with black boxes.
Police said Sunday they had determined that the 17 passengers and three crew members on board the plane all died.
The victims were 11 men and nine women between the ages of 42 and 84 — seven couples from various parts of Switzerland, a couple from neighboring Austria and their son, and the three crew members. Their names were not released.
The plane was flying the passengers back to its base at Duebendorf, near Zurich, from a two-day trip to Switzerland’s Italian-speaking southern Ticino region. It crashed shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, less than 50 minutes after taking off from Locarno’s Magadino airfield.
Police said they were not aware of any distress call.
The plane did not catch on fire before or after it hit the mountain, and investigators have not found any signs the aircraft lost parts or broke up in the air before the crash, Daniel Knecht of the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation BoardKnecht said.
Knecht dismissed the idea that the plane’s age was a problem. “Older planes, if they are correctly maintained, can be operated safely,” he said.