Vintage plane crashes in Swiss Alps, killing 20
The Associated Press
BERLIN» Determining why a vintage plane crashed in the Swiss Alps will be challenging since the 79-yearold aircraft did not have black boxes and was traveling in an area without frequent radar readings when it plunged into a mountain, killing all 20 of the people on board, investigators said Sunday.
The Junkers Ju-52 plane, operated by Swiss company Ju-Air, moved at a near-vertical angle before it hit the Piz Segnas mountain while carrying 17 passengers and three crew members, police and the head of the country’s transportation safety agency said.
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 fully booked propeller plane, built in 1939 and retired by Switzerland’s air force in 1981, was flying the passengers back to its base at Duebendorf, near Zurich, from a two-day trip to the Italian-speaking Ticino region. It crashed shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, less than 50 minutes after taking off from Locarno’s Magadino airfield.
The plane had two pilots. Police said they have not found any evidence a distress call was made before it crashed.
Photos released by Graubuenden canton (state) police showed the crumpled wreckage of the plane lying on the mountain located above the Alpine resort of Flims. Only its upside-down tail appeared more or less intact.
“We can assume that the aircraft hit the ground nearvertically and at relatively high speed,” Daniel Knecht of the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board said Sunday at a news conference in Flims.
He and senior police official Andreas Tobler said the Ju-52, an early passenger plane that was enlisted for military transport duty during World War II, lacked “black boxes,” the crash-resistant cockpit voice and data recorders that more modern aircraft have.
Officials expect the investigation of the cause to be “relatively complex, because we have to compare various indications, information and evidence and evaluate them,” Knecht said.
There also are typically few radar recordings in mountainous areas such as the one where the crash site is located, he added.
Officials can essentially rule out a collision with another aircraft or an obstacle such as a wire, Knecht said. There also was no indication of any “external influence,” he said, indicating that authorities don’t suspect foul play.
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, Knecht said.
The area around the crash site, which is popular with hikers and skiers and includes a glacier, was closed to the public. Knecht said authorities would probably need “a few days” to complete recovery work.
Officials appeared dubious about suggestions that unusually hot weather in Switzerland, like other
5 killed when small plane crashes in California.
CALIF.» Five people on board a small SANTA ANA, airplane were killed but nobody on the ground was hurt when the twin-engine Cessna crashed Sunday in a Southern California parking lot, authorities said.
The pilot of the Cessna 414 declared an emergency before crashing about a mile from John Wayne Airport, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac said.
The plane was heading to the airport southeast of Los Angeles when it came down and struck an unoccupied parked car in the lot of a Staples store and a CVS pharmacy, said Orange County Fire Authority Captain Steve Concialdi. There was no fire and nobody on the ground was hurt, he said.
Photos from the scene showed the plane upright but on its belly. Several roads surrounding the shopping center and the South Coast Plaza mall across the street were closed.
The plane is registered to the San Franciscobased real estate company Category III, according to an FAA database. A phone call to the company was not immediately returned Sunday.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the crash, Salac said. — The Associated Press parts of Europe, might have been a main cause of the crash. Knecht said that while heat can affect an aircraft’s performance, experienced pilots could deal with that.
Knecht also dismissed the idea that the plane’s age was necessarily a problem.
“Older planes, if they are correctly maintained, can be operated safely,” he said.
Nearly 5,000 Ju-52 planes, a product of Germany’s Junkers, were manufactured between 1932 and 1952.
Ju-Air started operating flights with the vintage prop planes in 1983, and the plane that crashed — with the registration HB-HOT — had been in service with the company since 1985.