Pilot’s body found after fighter jet crash in Swiss Alps

The Swiss Defense Department said in a statement that the F/A-18C jet that went missing Monday afternoon was found crashed on Tuesday near the Susten Pass in the Alps in central Switzerland.

The search for the pilot of the single-seat aircraft are ongoing, though access to the crash-site has been hampered by adverse weather conditions, the Federal Department indicated.

When asked about the survival chances of the pilot, he said: “We hope and pray”, Swiss news agency SDA reported.

The aircraft took off from the air base at Meiringen at 3pm as the second plane in a training exercise.

Radio contact with the aircraft was lost at 1405 GMT, four minutes after taking off from the Meiringen airbase.

A search mission was launched with helicopters but later abandoned due to bad weather.

Family members of the missing pilot have been notified of the situation.

The last fatal fighter jet crash in Switzerland happened in 2013, when a Swiss F/A-18 two-seater slammed into a mountainside in the centre of the country.

And during another training exercise in October previous year, an F/A-18 crashed in an uninhabited part of France’s eastern Doubs region.

Earlier in June this year, a F5 fighter jet from Patrouille Suisse crashed in the Netherlands after two jets touched during a training flight. The pilot ejected safely.