Hellenic Air Force personnel searching for the remains of the fallen Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet on Saturday detected a signal from the plane’s flight recorder, transmitting from a depth of about 800 metres. The aircraft crashed into the sea last Thursday, about nine miles northeast of its base on Skyros, as it was returning from a mission to intercept Turkish planes.
The signal was detected by a squad of specialised divers belonging to the Air Force’s 206 Air Force Infrastructure Wing. The search will now continue to find other sections of the aircraft, which will then be raised from the seabed with the assistance of the Navy and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. The sections of the plane that are raised, along with the flight recorder, will greatly help efforts to investigate the cause of the crash.
The crash of the Mirage 2000-5 resulted in the death of the 34-year-old pilot, Georgios Baltadoros, who was buried with full military honours in Morfovouni, Karditsa on Saturday.
