Aircraft recovery from Attersee postponed to Monday

Recovery crews will not be able to retrieve the small aircraft that crashed into Lake Attersee on Wednesday until Monday at the earliest, ORF reported. The operation was called off on Saturday because of difficult technical conditions and could not be carried out on Sunday either.

The Upper Austria state police described the recovery as a complex operation. Crews must first attach recovery lines to the wreck using an underwater robot. Firefighters on a boat above the crash site control the robot with a joystick at one of the deepest points in the lake.

The wreck lies 163 metres below the surface and still contains the bodies of the 19-year-old flight student and the 24-year-old flight instructor. Specialist divers have been requested for Monday and, after consultation with the public prosecutor’s office, have been tasked with attaching the recovery lines.

Even if a line can be secured, the wreck will have to be brought to the surface very slowly and carefully. Wolfgang Hufnagl, the Vöcklabruck district fire brigade commander, said on Saturday that the work required millimetre precision over several hours. There is also a risk until the end that the wreck could break apart and sink again.

The two-seat aircraft took off from Salzburg on Wednesday morning for a training flight. The two people on board were from Germany. Contact with the aircraft was lost at about 11.23 a.m. Witnesses said it rapidly lost altitude before crashing into the lake.