Five including teen pilot die in plane crashes

from The Local - German News in English:  Five including teen pilot die in plane crashes

The 17-year-old girl had started from a glider airfield near Osnabrück with no problems, but then came down in Quakenbrück, clipping several houses before smashing into one seemingly head-on.

No-one on the ground was hurt, but the pilot was killed. A police officer told Die Welt newspaper, “A colleague saw the crash himself. The plane looked to be flying very low, and made irregular movements.”

Four more people died when their single-engine plane crashed on Sunday morning near Coburg, Bavaria. A police spokeswoman said the pilot was a 31-year-old woman and that her passengers were another 31-year-old woman and two men aged 28 and 44.

A police spokesman said the people in the plane had no chance of survival.

The plane started from the airfield in Steinrücken, but then crashed into woodland just 500 metres or so from the runway and caught fire.

It was also reported on Sunday that another small plane crashed on Saturday near Constance - narrowly missing a group of sky divers who were in a tent preparing their parachutes.

The plane landed just a couple of metres away from them, sending the group scattering. One man broke his leg when leaping out of the tent.

There was even an explosion in the wreckage - just after the pilot and his passenger managed to get themselves out of the burning plen. She was said to have suffered serious burns to her arms, legs and head. The pilot was only slightly hurt. 

 Sounds like equipment failure in both cases...sad stories.