A plane crashed over the Baltic Sea on Sunday evening. The machine was apparently controlled by nobody.
According to Flightradar 24 recordings, the machine crashes into the sea off the coast of Latvia.
(Reuters/dpa) According to the Swedish rescue service, a private Cessna crashed off the Latvian coast on Sunday evening. NATO had sent jets to track the plane’s unpredictable course.
The private plane was registered in Austria. It was a Cessna 551. According to the Flightradar 24 website, it had taken off from Jerez in southern Spain at 2:56 p.m. (CEST) without a fixed destination. The plane turned around in Paris and Cologne before flying straight over the Baltic Sea, passing the Swedish island of Gotland.
Losing speed quickly
At 7:37 p.m., the tracker indicated that the aircraft was rapidly losing speed and altitude. “We have learned that the plane crashed into the sea northwest of the city of Ventspils in Latvia,” said a spokesman for the Swedish Ambulance Service. “It’s gone off the radar.” Latvian air traffic control and rescue service spokesmen were not immediately available.
A spokesman for the Lithuanian Air Force told Reuters that NATO had launched fighter jets to pursue the Cessna. The Swedish rescue service announced that nobody could be seen in the cockpit of the Cessna. According to initial findings, the pilot may have lost consciousness.
The German newspaper “Bild” reported that a couple with their two daughters and a pilot were said to have been on board. However, the newspaper did not give a source. She also wrote that the machine should have landed in Cologne and reported pressure problems in the cabin shortly after take-off.
German Eurofighters in action
At Latvia’s request, Lithuania sent a helicopter to the crash site for search and rescue purposes, a spokesman for the Lithuanian Air Force said. According to Latvia, ships were also sent. A Stena Line ferry en route from Ventspils to Norvik in Sweden was also diverted to the crash site, website MarineTraffic reports. The website also shows a Swedish search and rescue helicopter and plane at the scene.
The fighter jets used belonged to the NATO air policing mission at Amari airfield in Estonia, the Lithuanian Air Force spokesman told Reuters. The mission at the air force base currently consists of four Eurofighter jets from the German Air Force. The spokesman did not say how many jets were in use.