Last Friday, a group of eight sports planes took off from Hungary for the southern Croatian island of Brac for a short holiday over the weekend. Two of them crashed into 'Plitvice Lakes National Park in central Croatia, killing all four people on board. According to preliminary reports, the accidents were due to dense fog and bad weather.
The five planes managed to land at Zemunik airport outside Zadar and one at Drnis, inland from Split.
Croatia's chief investigator of plane accidents, Dinko Vodanovic, has told Hina that Croatian authorities are to set up a task force to establish the exact causes of the two accidents. One of the planes that crashed on Friday evening hit the Velika Lasina Hill and the other hit the Medvedjak Ostri Hill in the Plitvice Lakes area.
The task force will collect evidence, gather documentation, and find recordings of communication between the two pilots and air control authorities in Croatia as well as analyse weather reports at the time of the flights. It will then send its report to the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor, the two planes' owners, and the Air Traffic Department of the Transport Ministry.
The plane wrecks will be recovered from the thick forest of the national park by Croatian emergency services in the coming days.