On 4 August 2018, a Junkers Ju 52 passenger aircraft operated byJu-Air crashed near Piz Segnas, Switzerland, while en route from Locarno to Dübendorf. All 20 people on board were killed. It was the first fatal crash of a Ju-Air aircraft since the company began operations in 1982. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Accident
The aircraft was flying from Locarno Airport to Dübendorf Air Base, on the return leg of a two-day trip. The weather was unseasonably warm with choppy winds. At 16:56 local time on 4 August, the Junkers crashed into Piz Segnas mountain, at an elevation of. mountain ridge looking northwest, with the Martinsloch hole and Segnas Pass. The Ju 52 crashed on the plateau below. Swiss authorities stated that the plane appeared to have crashed almost vertically and at high speed. A witness at nearby Segnas Pass saw the Junkers approaching from the south and fly by the Martinsloch, a distinctive breakthrough, or hole, in the Tschingelhörner mountain ridge, next to the pass. Then, instead of flying over the ridge, the aircraft made a sharp turn, dived vertically and crashed onto the plateau below. Around 10 minutes before the crash, another witness had observed the Ju 52 suddenly banking sharply to the left and losing altitude, before increasing engine power and recovering to normal flight. The aircraft was carrying three crew and seventeen passengers, all of them Swiss apart from an Austrian couple and their son. Nine of the people aboard were women and eleven were men.
Aircraft and crew
The aircraft involved was a tri-motor Junkers Ju 52/3mg4e, registration HB-HOT, msn 6595. It had served with the Swiss Air Force from 1939 to 1985, when it was acquired by Ju-Air, a company that offers sightseeing flights on vintage aircraft, and had logged 10,000 hours of flight time. It had been used in the films Where Eagles Dare, and Valkyrie and the 2012 German movie . The aircraft had been issued with a certificate of airworthiness by the Federal Office of Civil Aviation on 6 April 2018, valid for two years. On the day of the crash, the Junkers was piloted by two veteran captains, aged 62 and 63. Both had extensive experience as pilots for Swissair, Swiss and Edelweiss, as well as more than 30 years of militia service with the Swiss Air Force. Both also had several hundred flight hours' worth of experience with the Ju 52. The third crew member was a 66-year-old flight attendant, also with 40 years of professional experience.
Aftermath
Hiking routes and the local airspace were closed off for the duration of the recovery operation, which involved five helicopters. Ju-Air suspended all flights by its other Ju 52 aircraft for two weeks, until they resumed operations on 17 August under stricter conditions. Following a review in March 2019, while the accident investigation was still ongoing, the FOCA banned Ju-Air from conducting commercial passenger flights with Ju 52s, allowing only private flights for club members. It was deemed that historical aircraft such as the Ju 52 no longer meet current safety requirements for commercial passenger transport.
Investigation
The accident is being investigated jointly by the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board and the cantonal police of Grisons on behalf of the federal and cantonal prosecutors' offices. A spokesperson for the STSB said that the Junkers "fell like a stone to the ground", and that the heatwavein Europe could have been a factor in the crash, as heat reduces an aircraft's climb performance. The police indicated that no distress signal was received from the aircraft prior to the crash. Investigators ruled out a collision with a cable or another aircraft, and said that there was no indication of foul play or the aircraft losing parts before the crash. The aircraft was not fitted with any flight recorders. Investigators are hoping to find some relevant information from passengers' personal photographic and video recordings during the sightseeing flight. The STSB issued its preliminary report on 15 August 2018. An intermediate report was issued on 20 November 2018, citing anterior corrosion marks and cracks, not related to the accident, which effectively grounded the two remaining Ju-52 of Ju-Air until further investigation of these airframe and engine issues.
