Two NATO surveillance planes followed him, but no one was spotted in the cockpit.
A Cessna 551 private plane crashed near the coast of Latvia. Due to an unclear course, fighter jets of NATO member countries took off to follow him, but no one was seen in the cockpit. This was reported by Reuters, BBC, Bild.
It is noted that the plane, which is believed to have four people on board, was supposed to land in the German city of Cologne, Germany, but instead took off for the Baltic.
“The aircraft was on a flight from Spain to Cologne, but during the flight the aircraft changed its flight route,” the Latvian Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement.
The twin-engine light business-class aircraft is registered to a private Austrian company. He took off from the Spanish city of Jerez and changed course twice – over Paris and Cologne, heading towards the Baltic Sea and flying close to the Swedish island of Gotland. At 17:37 GMT [19:37 Kyiv time – ed.] the FlightRadar24 system noticed its rapid loss of altitude. It then disappeared from radar and crashed into the Baltic Sea near the coast west of the city of Ventspils in Latvia.
This was confirmed by the Civil Aviation Agency of Latvia (CAA) – a search and rescue operation is currently underway with the participation of ships from Latvia and helicopters from Lithuania and Sweden to reach the scene as soon as possible.
We are following reports of a plane crash in Mutiny Bay, north of Seattle. The aircraft involved is a 55-year-old de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter with registration N725TH. We received the last signal at 22:08 UTC. It was indicating a vertical speed of -7744 fpmhttps://t.co/XDBLgGLF5s pic.twitter.com/bwEhxC5FQk
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) September 4, 2022
It is interesting that, according to Bild, after takeoff the plane reported problems with cabin pressure. Then the contact was interrupted when he flew to Spain. Spanish and French planes took to the sky to intercept him, but their pilots did not see anyone in the cockpit.
Related video
Recall that on the evening of July 17 a Ukrainian AN-12 cargo plane crashed near the Greek city of Kavala
strong>, which was flying from Serbia to Jordan. All eight crew members died. The following dayGreece filed official complaints with Serbia and Ukraine over the crash of this plane and the resulting explosion. It turned out that he was transporting 11.5 tons of Serbian-made mortar ammunition and the final destination was Bangladesh.