ARCHIVED - German family dies after private plane from Jerez, Spain crashes in Baltic Sea
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The plane, apparently piloted by a wealthy German air magnate, may have had cabin pressure problems
A Cessna private plane that took off from the airport of Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz) on Sunday September 4 crashed into the Baltic Sea, killing the four German nationals on board, who seem to be the pilot, his wife, their daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend.
The man was a German businessman, the owner of the Quick Air aeronautical company, Karl-Peter Griesemann, who had a holiday home with his family in the south of Spain which they came to often by plane from Cologne (Germany).
Reports suggest that the aircraft was supposed to land in Cologne, but for reasons still unknown, it passed over its destination and began to lose altitude until it finally crashed in Latvian waters, just outside Ventspils.
According to the flight tracking website flightradar, the aircraft left Jerez on Sunday morning, passed through Spain, France, Germany and into the Baltic Sea. Contact with the plane was lost after it passed the Polish coast, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and the Lithuanian coast until it entered the sea area closest to Latvia.
According to the German newspaper Bild, it was a Cessna plane with the flight number OE-FGR, which reported problems with cabin pressure after take-off. Shortly after crossing Spain, contact with the aircraft was lost in France. Two Spanish and French fighter jets took off to check the situation of the private aircraft, but the pilots could not see anyone in the cockpit or in the aircraft.
All contact with the plane was lost at around 5pm local time (3pm GMT), after they reported a problem with cabin pressure.
At least one Eurofighter fighter jet took off from the Rostock air base to accompany the Cessna to find out what was happening, but it too failed to get information and then diverted to the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.
A Danish F16 fighter then escorted the unmanned plane and the pilots witnessed it go into a tailspin and crash off the Latvian coast of the Baltic Sea.
The Swedish coastguard sent rescue planes, boats and a helicopter to the crash site. Swedish and Latvian maritime and air assets are involved in the search for the wreckage.
The Austrian news agency APA quotes a Swedish air safety expert as saying it is possible that the plane’s occupants were rendered unconscious by a lack of oxygen in the cabin due to a problem with the cabin pressure.
NOTE: This article has been corrected to rectify erroneous information. The pilot’s name has been corrected to ‘Griesemann’, instead of ‘Grisemann’. The other occupants were previously believed to be his wife and young daughters, but this has now been changed to reflect the fact that it is now thought they are the wife, daughter and her boyfriend.
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