Flight school keeps technical failure open as cause of Attersee crash

Skygate Aviation Academy has not ruled out a technical failure as the cause of the fatal crash of a training aircraft into Lake Attersee in Upper Austria on August 26, ORF reports. A 19-year-old flight student and her 24-year-old flight instructor, both from Germany, were killed.

The two-seat aircraft had taken off from Salzburg that morning. According to eyewitnesses, it rapidly lost altitude before crashing into the lake. The cause remains under investigation.

In a statement issued on Friday, the flight school said weather conditions had been good. Based on the information currently available, it said there was no indication of a collision with another aircraft, lightning strike, hail, an explosion or an in-flight fire. Known video recordings also showed no obvious damage to the wings or control surfaces before impact.

Skygate said the flight had been planned as a 30 to 45-minute introductory flight, consisting of a simple sightseeing circuit without special manoeuvres or emergency procedures. The aircraft had undergone a technical inspection shortly beforehand, and all required documents and approvals were valid. The flight instructor had more than 300 hours of instructional experience.

However, the school explicitly said it could not rule out a technical defect. Possible scenarios included problems with the control surfaces, failure of instruments or the electrical system, a bird strike, engine failure or an incorrect trim setting.

None of these scenarios could be ruled out with certainty based on the information currently available, the school said. It added that several of them could, in principle, still have allowed for a controlled emergency landing. Why that was not possible in this case, or why it was not attempted, remains unclear.

Skygate said it had owned and operated the crashed Tecnam P2002JF. The aircraft was bought directly from the manufacturer in 2022 and had been used for training ever since.

Technical oversight was carried out by an externally appointed, authorised organisation, according to the school. It maintained the technical records, monitored flight hours and issued maintenance orders to licensed maintenance companies. Those companies performed maintenance and repair work and sent the documentation to the technical oversight organisation.

The flight school said it did not want to determine the cause of the crash. That task belongs to the responsible investigative and accident investigation authorities. It is still not known what happened in the cockpit during the final minutes of the flight.