'No human remains found': 4 feared dead as private jet carrying family drops off radar after rapidly losing altitude
LATVIA, EUROPE: A private jet carrying a family disappeared off the coast of Latvia after rapidly losing altitude and is feared to have crashed into the Baltic Sea with four people dead. The Austrian-registered plane was believed to have been privately rented and was flying from Jerez in southern Spain. NATO jets scrambled to follow its erratic course on Sunday, September 4. The plan was due to land in Cologne.
The Austrian-registered Cessna 551 aircraft with flight number OE-FGR is believed to have crashed after an inconsistent flight course with nobody visible in the cockpit as per FlightRadar24. A spokesperson for Sweden's rescue service talking about the plane crash, said, "We've learned that the plane has crashed (in the ocean) north-west of the town of Ventspils in Latvia. It has disappeared from the radar." Johan Wahlstrom of the Swedish Maritime Administration said, "They could not see anyone in the cockpit." The plane was due to land in Cologne but continued to fly northeast until crashed over the sea off Ventspils. The rescue service also said that nobody was visible in the cockpit.
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Private jet carrying 4, disappears
As per the German newspaper Bild, the jet was carrying four people. The publication says that the aircraft carried the pilot, along with a man, a woman, and their daughter. The Latvian civil aviation agency said in a statement that the jet, "was flying between Spain and Cologne but when it changed course, air traffic controllers were not able to make contact." According to the route, the Cessna jet took off from Jerez in southern Spain minutes before 3 pm, then it turned twice at Paris and Cologne, before heading straight out over the Baltic, passing near the Swedish island of Gotland. Liva Veita, spokesperson of the Latvian Navy said, "Our ships are on the way to the position where the plane crash happened."
The Mirror further reported that soon after taking off, the plane reported that there was a problem with the pressure in the cabin and that the wreckage has been found. Then just outside the Iberian Peninsula, they lost contact. The Maritime and Air Rescue Centre's Lars Antonsson have clarified that the chance of finding any survivor is bleak. He added, "We have no explanation at all, we can only speculate" about what happened "but they were clearly incapacitated on board," and that "no human remains have been found." According to the MarineTraffic website, a Stena Line ferry traveling from Ventspils to Norvik in Sweden was also redirected to the crash site.