The plane that crashed in Nieuwlande in March crashed nose down. The police report this now that the investigation into the accident has been completed.
The two occupants were killed in the crash: a 67-year-old man from Hoogeveen and a 56-year-old man from Drachten. The plane landed in a field in the Brouwerswijk.
The subsequent investigation took months. This now shows that the two occupants were probably engaged in a so-called stall exercise. The police say that the aircraft subsequently ended up in an ‘overblown’ situation at a ‘relatively low altitude’.
According to aviation expert Joris Melkert from TU Delft, pilots try to fly slower and slower during a stall exercise. “Until the airflow says: now it stops, because you always need forward speed,” he explains. “If the aerodynamics no longer work, the plane dives with the nose down. You have to deal with that.”
When pilots practice relatively low in the air, the chance of a fatal outcome is greater because the time to react is shorter, says Melkert. “Low-altitude stalls are one of the deadliest combinations in aviation.”
According to the police, the results gave no reason to focus the investigation on other people.