Austria
Wreckage of missing small plane discovered in Tyrol
A small plane on the way to Germany has gone missing. The last signal came from the Ötztal. photo
© Ute Wessels/dpa
Since Saturday there has been no trace of a Cessna 172 that was on its way to Bavaria from Italy. Now a police helicopter has discovered a wreck.
Three days after the disappearance of a small plane, the police in Austria discovered the wreckage of the Cessna 172 in the high mountains. “It is the wreckage of the missing plane,” said the head of the Tyrolean aviation authority, Klaus Hohenauer, to the German Press Agency.
Shortly before, the remains of the small aircraft had been spotted by a police helicopter on the Schrankar in Tyrol at an altitude of 2,800 meters. The plane’s pilot was found dead on board. There were no further victims.
According to the “Tiroler Tageszeitung”, the Cessna 172 took off from Rome on Saturday with the destination Bad Wörishofen near Augsburg. However, radio contact was lost northeast of Sölden at 11:45 a.m. Shortly before, according to the newspaper, the German pilot had reported in an emergency call that he was losing altitude in his Cessna. According to the police, the search had been severely affected in the past few days by adverse weather conditions such as hurricane force winds. Authorities suspect that only the pilot was on board.