Junkers Ju-52/3m HB-HOT lost with casualties

[Okami]

Sad news out of Switzerland, where JU-Air's HB-HOT, a 1939-built Ju-52/3m, was lost today (Saturday, August 4th) while on a sightseeing flight from Dübendorf, Zürich to Locarno and back. Unfortunately, it looks like there were no survivors among her 3 crew and 17 passengers.

http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/ostschweiz/ ... b-27027811

HB-HOT was delivered new to the Swiss Air Force on October 4th 1939, and served until 1982. During her time with the Air Force she famously portrayed the winter-camoed Ju-52 in the 1968 war epic "Where Eagles Dare". After being transferred to JU-Air on October 15th 1982, she was restored and returned to airworthiness in 1985. For a long time she had flown with a special "Rimowa" sponsored livery, however in recent times she had been repainted in a special livery for the Hülse beer brand.

[Airspeed]

Very sad news.
Condolences to the families involved.

[Paul K]

More news and discussion at PPrune:

https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/611 ... rland.html

What a dreadful thing to happen. RIP all.

EDIT: BBC News report - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45076060

[DaveG]

Sad news indeed. My condolences to the friends and family of those involved.

[Okami]

Swiss Police have just held a press conference. Sadly, the worst fears have come true.

HB-HOT was operating a two-day aerial cruise, with the first segment flying passengers from Dübendorf to Locarno on Friday, where passengers visited local events, participated in a boat cruise on Lake Lugano and stayed overnight at a local hotel; the return flight was made on Saturday afternoon. It was during this latter return flight that HB-HOT crashed.

There were 3 crew and 17 passengers on board; none survived. The passengers involved were 7 married couples from Switzerland and one married couple and their son from Austria; the youngest victim was 42 while the oldest was 84. The captain was a 61-year old ex-Air Force and Swiss pilot current on the A330 and flying the JU-52 since 2004; the co-pilot was a 62-year old Swissair, Swiss and Edelweiss pilot current on the A330 & A340. There is no word on the third (non-flying) crew member.

While a NOTAM was in place for the area due to the construction of a cable, the location of this cable was well away and considerably lower down the mountain from the crash site; somebody involved in the cable's construction has already testified to the press that the cable in question had not yet been suspended, so it was not involved in the crash. No other aircraft were involved in the crash as well.

According to eyewitnesses - of which there are several according to Swiss police - the aircraft made a 180° turn before suddenly stalling; it fell almost vertically from the air before impacting the mountain. The aircraft was intact until impact; the debris field is very compact.

*Personal observation: from seeing pictures, the two main landing gear struts seem to be the only parts to have separated from the main body of the wreck, apparently lying no more than 20 to 30 meters from the wreck itself. This seems to indicate they sheered away on impact with the ground. The sudden stop of forward motion seems to have broken the aircraft's back, causing the tail to drape over the forward fuselage and wing. This seems to indicate a very violent and essentially non-survivable vertical impact with little forward motion.*

Police says the investigation will be highly dependent on eyewitness accounts and results from the technical analysis of the wreck, as HB-HOT was not equipped with a black box, and the accident area itself was poorly covered by radar due to the terrain.

On a (perhaps unrelated?) note: about 7 hours earlier that day and 45 miles west of the JU-Air crash, a SOCATA TB-10 Tobago crashed killing four.

[FlyTexas]

Horrible...just horrible.

Brian

[Nigel H-J]

Looking at the pictures of the crash it appears that there was no fire after impacting the ground and wonder whether the crew shut off the fuel and magnetos before impact.

From one picture shown one person from PPrune suggested that it shows possible smoke or fuel leaking from the right hand engine however, this does not detract from the terrible loss of those on-board

Condolences to family and friends for the loss of their loved ones.

Nigel.

[nigelb]

So sad to see this news. Condolences to everyone involved.

Nigel²

[Filonian]

Terrible. Condolences to family and friends of those involved.


Graham

[paulsl]

Oh dear. Memories of Concorde and folk having a special trip that went so wrong. RIP.