A second jet trainer has crashed this morning killing the two pilots on board. The accident occurred close to the Yacht Club in Santiago de la Ribera with the aircraft crashing directly into the sea.
On board was the flight instructor, Daniel Melero Ordonez, an Air Force Commander who was a pilot of the Eagle Patrol Display Team and who was also Officer in Command of the Maintenance Squadron at the San Javier Air Academy.
He was accompanied by a student pilot named as Rosa Almirón Otero.
Pedro Marín, who witnessed the accident, told the local press that the plane “crashed straight into the sea without attempting any evasion manoeuvre.
Marín said that the aircraft crashed directly between the boats anchored next to the Yacht Club and that the tail of the plane could be seen protruding from the water, which is little more than two metres deep. Several Army vessels, which were moored close by, approached the accident site almost immediately.
RELATED: Commander Francisco Marín Núñez killed in jet crash close to La Manga
A second witness who was walking along the beach with her daughter at the time said that she was watching two AGA planes making manoeuvres “when one of them began to make a strange noise after which it plummeted straight into the sea.”
The mayor of San Javier, José Miguel Luengo, and the president of the Community, Fernando López Miras, who were inspecting the damage in San Pedro del Pinatar that had been caused by the recent rains travelled to the scene of the accident.
The plane is a model Enaer T-35C Pillán or Sieve, of Chilean origin, which is the basic Air Force training aircraft used at the Air Academy with the call sign E-26 Sieve.
This is the second fatal air crash in which an AGA Air Force aircraft has been involved in less than a month. On August 26, a c-101 reactor crashed into the Mediterranean close to La Manga del Mar Menor in an accident in which Commander Francisco Marín was killed.
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