A small private plane with tail number OE-FGR Cessna 551 crashed off the coast of Latvia. Delfi writes that the incident occurred on the evening of September 4, in the Baltic Sea, near Ventspils. According to Bild, the pilot, husband and wife, and daughter were on board. At the same time, the Latvian agency LETA writes that there were six people on board.
The business jet registered in Austria flew from Jerez in southern Spain. It took off from there at 12:56pm (GMT). The FlightRadar24 website did not list the destination, but Delfi says it is Cologne.
flightradar24
Shortly after takeoff, the pilot reported pressure problems in the cabin. After the Iberian Peninsula, contact with the plane was lost. The plane overturned Paris and Cologne.
After passing Cologne Airport, air traffic control tried to contact the plane, but to no avail. Swedish television channel SVT explains that at first the plane was kept at an altitude of about 11 thousand meters and maintained a speed of about 670 km / h.
Due to the suspicious flight path, first German Tornado fighters and then Danish fighters were sent to the plane. At that time, the business jet was heading to the Baltic Sea, to the Swedish island of Gotland.
At 17:37 GMT, the private jet began to lose speed and altitude rapidly. Citing the German news agency DPA, RIA Novosti previously reported that the pilot of a private Cessna jet lost consciousness.
At the same time, the Swedish rescue service reported that the pilots of NATO fighters did not see anyone in the cockpit of Cessna during visual contact in the air.
The private ship crashed about 6.5 km northwest of Ventspils.
“After 20 minutes, a Coast Guard vessel arrived at the crash site, which will continue its search efforts. These included helicopters from Sweden and Lithuania,” said Delfi, head of the Marine Search and Rescue Operations Coordination Center of the Latvian Navy Pēteris Coast Guard Service on Saturday. .
The rescue helicopter managed to find debris and oil puddles in the water. Latvian Navy press secretary Liva Veita said the country’s authorities had sent ships to the place where the business jet crashed.
The Stena Line ferry, which runs between Nynäshamn (Sweden) and Ventspils, was also involved in the rescue operations, according to the MarineTraffic website. Delfi writes that the ship was not far from the scene at the time of the accident.
Reuters stated that GG Rent, registered in Cologne as the owner of the aircraft in the Austrian aircraft register, has not yet commented on what happened.
According to Juhan Alin, representative of the Latvian Navy Coast Guard’s maritime search and rescue operations Coordination Center, “there is no hope that there are survivors.”
The Cessna 551 is a turbofan, twin-engine light business aircraft. It was developed by the American firm Cessna Aircraft Company and is an upgraded version of the Cessna 550 Citation II business jet. The first production aircraft took off on February 14, 1984. This aircraft is flown by a pilot.
Source: Gazeta
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