BERLIN (AP) – Swiss investigators said Thursday that “high risk flying” by the pilots of a vintage propeller plane led to a crash in the Alps in 2018 that killed all 20 people on board.
The 79-year-old Junkers Ju-52 of the local airline Ju-Air crashed on August 4, 2018 in southeastern Switzerland.
The plane, carrying 17 passengers and three crew members, crashed almost vertically into a mountain. It flew back from Locarno in Southern Switzerland to its base near Zurich.
The Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board said in its final report that “the pilots’ high-risk flying was a direct cause of the accident.”
As they entered a narrow mountain valley, “the flight crew piloted the aircraft at a low altitude, with no alternative flight path and with an airspeed that was dangerously low under the conditions,” said researchers.
When the plane hit turbulence in the valley, “the risky way of flying through these not unusual turbulences caused the pilots to lose control of the plane,” they added. The aircraft flew too low to have enough space to recover.
The report also found that the aircraft’s center of gravity was too far aft during the doomed flight, a “dangerous situation (which) was caused by inadequate flight preparation and errors in the Ju-Air software.”
It said the pilots had “become accustomed … to failing to comply with the rules for safe flight operations and taking great risks, even with passengers on board,” and that Ju-Air did not see the risks or prevent them from taking the risk breaking rules. .
The report also accused the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation of failing to identify “numerous security issues” at Ju-Air or of being ineffective in addressing them.
That office revoked Ju-Air’s commercial flight permit in March 2019 after assessing the risks posed by vintage aircraft passenger flights, but said it could continue private flights for registered members if it met several conditions.
Ju-Air said in a statement on Thursday that it “will do everything it can to learn from the crash.”
It said it was “pleased that the direct causes of the accident could be clearly demonstrated” and analyzes the issue of a center of gravity problem. Evaluations suggest the problem occurred 35 years before the crash, but had not caused problems in the meantime and had not been noticed by Ju-Air or regulators, the company said.
It added that issues that have led to pilots’ risky behavior going undiscovered will be addressed in the future selection, training and supervision of pilots.