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Swiss air force suspends PC-21 flights after accident

Plane crash at Emmen airfield in Switzerland.
The accident occurred at the Emmen military airfield in central Switzerland on November 28 at the end of a training exercise. Photo ©VBS/DDPS

All flights using PC-21 aircraft have been suspended in Switzerland following an accident on Tuesday afternoon at a military air base in central Switzerland involving a training plane.

The accident occurred at the Emmen military airfield on Tuesday afternoon at the end of an exercise. Two trainer planes were due to land when one deviated and left the runway.

The pilot and student on board were able to eject and land safely using parachutes. The plane came to rest, damaged, in the meadow next to the runway. One of the pilots was taken to hospital.

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The aircraft involved in the accident was a PC-21 trainer plane manufactured by the Swiss firm Pilatus. The two-seater aircraft has been used by the army since 2008.

An investigation has been opened and the air force has decided to temporarily suspend all flights with its PC-21 fleet. 

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The fleet is used for basic and advanced training for jet pilots as well as in air combat and aerobatic training. A total of eight aircraft are typically used for training purposes.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

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