The very last delivery of a PC-6 aircraft from Pilatus Flugzeugwerke ended in tragedy. On Monday, the Indonesian Smart Aviation took delivery of the last model of the Pilatus PC 6 series in Stans NW. This marked the end of production of the single-engine propeller aircraft after 63 years. However, a fatal accident occurred on the flight to Indonesia.
As aviation news portal Aerotelegraph writes, the transfer flight began Monday at Buochs NW airfield. The plane landed in Heraklion in Crete for a stopover. Thursday morning it continued. Problems arose immediately after takeoff. As the newspaper “Cretapost” writes, the pilots would have made a distress call. Recordings on the flight tracking service Flightradar24 show that they were then reversed.
However, they never reached the airport. The brand new machine plunged from a height of 430 meters into the sea. On board were a pilot († 62) from Indonesia, who died in the crash, and another pilot (32) from South Africa. The accident site is about seven kilometers east of Crete’s capital, Heraklion. Pilatus Flugzeugwerke confirmed the crash to Aerotelegraph: “We support the authorities so that this incident can be clarified.” (treasure)