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The glider lies broken into several pieces in the middle of the street in a residential area in Wetzlar, Germany – not far from a park and near the Lahn. The pilot died at the crash site. “It could have been much worse,” says the spokesman for the Wetzlar fire department, Alexander Lotz, at the crash site.
Because with the summery Pentecost weather on Sunday afternoon, many people are out and about in the park and on a children’s playground or are sitting in front of their houses and apartment blocks. The police initially thought it was worse. People are often out and about in the street and children play here, says a neighbor. He spoke of “great luck” that nothing more had happened.
A few hours after the crash at around 2:20 p.m., it is clear: the machine first hit a house roof and then fell on one or more vehicles, as police spokesman Guido Rehr reports. A driver was injured. Although she was being treated in a hospital in Wetzlar, she escaped with minor injuries.
The pilot sat alone in the plane, the woman alone in the car. The identity of the two was not yet clear. Contrary to initial fears, more people were not injured. A survey of the witnesses and residents should reveal details. And the Federal Office for Aircraft Accident Investigation has started the investigation.
Loud bang
He was lying on the couch and suddenly heard a loud bang, reports a resident. “That was extreme.” He had thought of a jet fighter or a gas explosion, but not of a plane crash. “It’s normal for gliders to fly over here,” reports the neighbor. “I always see it when they approach for landing, they always fly over here at an angle.” Because on the other side of the Lahn, just a few hundred meters away, is the Wetzlar-Garbenheim glider airfield. “Just yesterday another one flew pretty low over it.”
“Glider pilots are part of the daily picture in the sky here,” says fire brigade spokesman Lotz. It was initially not known on Sunday whether the pilot of the plane that crashed on Sunday was also approaching this glider airfield or started there.
Around 53,000 people live in the central Hessian district town of Wetzlar. After the crash, around 40 firefighters, several ambulances, a helicopter and the police were on duty.
Source: Nachrichten
