Swiss army plane crashes in mountains

The wreckage of a PC-7 plane belonging to the Swiss army was found on the Schreckhorn mountain on Tuesday afternoon after going missing that morning.

Published: 12 September 2017 12:37 CEST

The military aircraft set off on a routine flight from Payerne airfield in the canton of Vaud on Tuesday at around 8.30am with just one person, an experienced pilot, on board.

It was due to land in Locarno in the canton of Ticino an hour later, but failed to arrive at the expected time.

A search operation was launched and the plane was located at around 4pm on the Schreckhorn in the Bernese Oberland, the army said in a statement.

A recovery operation will commence as soon as the weather permits.

Currently the pilot has not been found.

UPDATE: Ryanair passenger jet makes emergency landing in Berlin over 'fake bomb threat'

A Ryanair flight making an emergency landing

The flight from Dublin to Krakow made the unexpected diversion after a reported bomb threat, German newspaper Bild Zeitung said.

“We were notified by the Krakow airport that an airport employee received a phone call saying an explosive device had been planted on the plane,” said regional police spokesman, Sebastian Glen.

“German police checked and there was no device, no bomb threat at all. So we know this was a false alarm,” he told AFP on Monday.

“The perpetrator has not been detained, but we are doing everything possible to establish their identity,” Glen added, saying the person faces eight years in prison.

With 160 people on board, the flight arrived at the Berlin Brandenburg airport shortly after 8 pm Sunday, remaining on the tarmac into early Monday morning.

A Berlin police spokesperson said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The passengers will resume their journey to Poland on board a spare aeroplane,” she told AFP, without giving more precise details for the alert.

The flight was emptied with the baggage also searched and checked with sniffer dogs, German media reported.

The passengers were not able to continue their journey until early Monday morning shortly before 4:00 am. The federal police had previously classified the situation as harmless. The Brandenburg police are now investigating the case.

Police said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The Ryanair plane that made an emergency landed reported an air emergency and was therefore immediately given a landing permit at BER,” airport spokesman Jan-Peter Haack told Bild.

“The aircraft is currently in a safe position,” a spokeswoman for the police told the newspaper.

The incident comes a week after a Ryanair flight was forced to divert to Belarus, with a passenger — a dissident journalist — arrested on arrival.

And in July last year, another Ryanair plane from Dublin to Krakow was forced to make an emergency landing in London after a false bomb threat.

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