Two planes crash mid-air at Switzerland air show
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FIRST POSTED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 23, 2015 09:37 AM EDT | UPDATED: SUNDAY, AUGUST 23, 2015 09:47 AM EDT
Parts of one of the two planes which crashed during an air show are seen in the village of Dittingen, Switzerland, in this handout photo provided by Kantonspolizei Basel Landschaft on August 23, 2015. Two small planes crashed at an air show in Dittingen, Switzerland, on Sunday, killing at least one person, police said. REUTERS/Kantonspolizei Basel Landschaft/Handout via Reuters
BERLIN -- At least one person died when two small planes collided in the air and crashed at an airshow in northern Switzerland on Sunday, police said.
The two planes were part of a formation of three and they crashed just before 11:30 local time after they touched each other in the air, according to Meinrad Stoecklin, a spokesman for police in Basel-Landschaft.
The airshow in the village of Dittingen near Basel was temporarily interrupted as rescue teams raced to the scene of the crash, police said.
It was not immediately clear if there were more injured people. Swiss media reported that one pilot managed to escape by parachute.
The two planes were part of a formation of three planes, but the third plane of the formation was not involved in the crash and landed safely, they reported.
On Saturday, seven people died and more than a dozen were injured after a military jet participating in an airshow in the UK crashed into a busy road. The Hawker Hunter fighter jet, which was participating in the Shoreham Airshow near Brighton in southern England, hit several vehicles on a nearby road as it crashed. Witnesses told local TV that the jet appeared to have crashed when it failed to pull out of a loop manoeuvr.
