French fighter jets sent to intercept ‘ghost’ plane

Un scenario worthy of a disaster movie. On Sunday, September 4, a Cessna plane crashed into the sea off Latvia, the Swedish authorities announced shortly before 8 p.m. (Paris time). What makes this story all the more enigmatic is what happened before the plane crashed. In fact, after taking off at 2:55 p.m. from Jerez (Spain), contact with the aircraft was lost shortly after the aircraft had crossed the Pyrenean massif.

According to the German newspaper Picture, a few moments earlier, the captain had reported pressurization problems in the cabin. Moreover, the Spanish and French hunters dispatched around the aircraft in difficulty could not see anyone inside the plane, either in the cockpit or the cabin. The route of the crazy plane would have continued, according to the aircraft tracking tools, above France. He would then have crossed France, from the Basque country to the northeast. Once the plane entered Danish airspace, the fighter pilots observed that the plane was spinning. A few minutes later, the plane crashed in the Baltic Sea. Relief was sent to the scene by Sweden.

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A Rafale engaged “on alert”

The aircraft fell “when it ran out of fuel,” said Lars Antonsson, Swedish relief chief at Agence France Presse. According to Lars Antonsson, Latvian rescue teams are directing operations at the scene of the tragedy, with the help of a plane and a helicopter from the Swedish coast guard. “No human remains have been found,” he said.

According to the initial flight plan, the private jet was to join Spain to the city of Cologne, Germany. According to information from Picture, four people were on board: the pilot, a woman, a man and his daughter. The reasons for the tragedy remain unknown for the moment. “We have no explanation, we can only speculate”, explained the head of the rescuers. “But on board, they were clearly unable” to react. Latvian authorities have made no statement regarding the crash.

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“Alert by the Spanish authorities of probable difficulties in pressurizing the aircraft, the National Center for Air Operations (CNOA) in Lyon Mont Verdun ordered the take-off on the alert of a Rafale”, but “attempts to make radio contact were proved unsuccessful” and “visual contact did not allow us to observe any activity in the cockpit”, details the Air Force in a press release published Sunday evening.

“According to the flight manifest, the plane, a Cessna 551, was carrying 4 passengers” and “was on a flight between Spain and Cologne (Germany) but when it changed course during the flight, the air dispatchers did not ‘were no longer able to contact him,’ the Latvian aviation agency said. “Currently, rescue teams with boats and helicopters from Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden are working at the scene of the accident,” she told AFP.