A small plane crashed in the Swiss Alps on Aug. 4, killing 20 people, according to local officials.
Authorities have provided few details about those on board JU-Air’s plane which crashed on the west side of the Piz Segnas mountain in the canton of Graubuenden.
But Seventeen passengers, two pilots, and a flight attendant lost their lives in the accident, said police on Aug. 5, according to Swiss news website Blick.
According to the SwissInfo website, citing local police, the plane went down near the Piz Segnas mountain in the afternoon at an altitude of 8,330 feet.
Daniel Knecht of the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board told Blick in a news conference that the vintage aircraft may have hit the ground near-vertically at a high rate of speed.
“The JU-Air team is deeply saddened and is thinking of the passengers, the crew and families and friends of the victims,” JU-Air wrote on its website on Aug. 5.
The Ju-52 aircraft, made by Germany’s Junkers, were made between 1932 and 1952.
The airspace above the crash site was closed by the Federal Office for Civil Aviation and access to popular hiking trails in the surrounding area was blocked.
Just hours before the Ju-52 crash, a family of four was killed when their small plane went down in the Alps. That plane it was located further west.
Reuters contributed to this report.
