The Cessna with the registration OE-FGR, which is said to be registered to a German company, was actually on its way from Jerez in Spain to Cologne. According to the reports, radio contact broke off shortly after take-off after pressure problems were reported from the cabin. According to dpa, the pilot may have become unconscious.
From this point on, the plane was on the road as a “ghost machine”. Spanish, French, Swedish and German fighter jets took off but could not make contact with the people in the machine. According to both the French and Swedish armies, their pilots saw no one in the Cessna’s cockpit.
tank empty
The Cessna changed direction twice in France and near Cologne, but continued to fly towards the Baltic Sea. A German fighter plane turned off at Rügen and a Danish Air Force jet took over. A short time later, the private jet lost altitude rapidly and crashed into the sea. According to the Swedish news agency TT, the time of the crash was given as 7:45 p.m. The accident site is likely to be north-west of the Latvian city of Ventspils.
According to the authorities, boats and helicopters from Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden were at the crash site on Sunday evening. Mortal remains were not initially found, as the head of the Swedish search and rescue mission, Lars Antonsson, told the AFP news agency. The flight was relatively steady, then the machine lost altitude shortly before the Latvian coast. According to Antonsson, she crashed “when the tank was empty.” Why the machine deviated from the course remained unclear. “We have no explanation at all, we can only speculate,” said Antonsson. “But they were clearly incapable of acting on board.”
German family on board?
Little was initially known about the identity of the four people on board. The Spanish newspaper “El País” reported, citing Spanish sources familiar with the incident, that a German family who are said to have heard the machine – an elderly man, his wife, a daughter of the couple and a man of their age.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed to APA in the evening that the plane was a machine registered in Austria. One is in contact with the Swedish and Latvian authorities, said a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry. There is no information about the inmates yet. So far, however, there have been no inquiries at the Austrian consular offices in Spain, for example.
The Swedish flight safety expert Hans Kjäll said that a leak may have led to a loss of pressure in the cabin. The occupants could ultimately have become unconscious due to lack of oxygen. This can happen within 30 seconds, and it is also not unlikely that the occupants of the aircraft will not notice the loss of pressure.
Source: Nachrichten