Another small plane fatality in Croatia.
During the last few months, several small airplane accidents have taken place in Croatia. The series continued on Monday in Donji Lapac, where a two-seater aircraft crashed and killed one person. The number of people killed in aircraft accidents in the past two and a half months has risen to seven, according to a report in Slobodna Dalmacija on August 5, 2015.
First, at the beginning of June, two people died in a crash of a small aircraft near Vrbovec. In late June, two pilots were killed in a plane crash in Resnik, while three days ago two members of the Aero Club “Ždral” were fatally injured in the crash of aircraft into a meadow near Daruvar. In the last 20 years, there has never been a similar series of crashes of small aircraft. Accidents have happened before, but it has never happened that in such a short time so many people died.
“Obviously, this is a consequence of bad maintenance of the aircraft that were involved in these accidents. Who knows how these planes are maintained and whether they adhere to the prescribed standards which must meet the minimum technical requirements”, said an expert on aviation accidents who wished to remain anonymous.
However, he is also of the opinion that it was a consequence of the failure of the system that monitors civil aviation. “I think the Civil Aviation Agency and its inspectors should be more effective and carry out regular inspections of aircraft. The increased number of such accidents demonstrates the problem with air safety. I believe the system failed.”
During the control of the aircraft, each extraordinary event on the aircraft and each part change must be recorded. If an aircraft has a recurring problem with some of its parts, it is necessary to change the parts. “It is obvious that the aircraft are not well maintained, defective parts are not replaced with the original parts, and that results in tragedies like these.”
Civil Aviation Agency of Croatia and its inspectors should control all small operators and owners of private aircraft and airfields. When they find some irregularities, they order corrective measures and impose penalties. The Civil Aviation Agency had no comment to questions regarding these accidents.
