Firemen have recovered parts of a body from the site where a Swiss Air Force fighter jet with two people on board crashed near Lake Lucerne on Wednesday. The defence ministry had already said there was little hope that either had survived.
Investigations into the cause of the crash are continuing. The plane’s black box data recorder has not yet been found.
Army chief André Blattmann spoke of a «black day» for the armed forces.
The F/A -18 jet flew into a cliff overlooking Lake Alpnach, one of the branches of Lake Lucerne. It was one of two planes that had taken off from a base in Meiringen around 1:30 p.m. The other plane performed a 180-degree emergency manoeuvre near the crash site and returned safely to base.
«It was a normal emergency manoeuvre often used in bad weather conditions,» Pierre de Goumoëns, a Swiss fighter jet pilot, told the media.
It remains unclear whether the manoeuvre was used because the plane was in a real emergency situation or whether it was part of a training exercise.
The pilot was experienced, with 1500 to 2000 flight hours under his belt. The Tages-Anzeiger newspaper reported on Thursday that planes are equipped with warning systems that should inform pilots when they are too close to the ground, but that they are regularly switched off in the mountains to avoid constant alarms.
The weather in the region had grown progressively worse over the course of the afternoon, with rain and wind gusts of up to 50 kilometres per hour recorded at high altitudes. However, Air Force Commander Aldo Schellenberg told the media that the weather forecast would not have led to the mission being cancelled.
Parts of the plane fell onto the overhead line of the railway linking Meiringen and Lucerne, forcing the cancellation of trains. Police installed an oil boom in the lake.
The Air Force has provisionally halted all flights.