Swiss vintage planes can fly after crash – with conditions

An archive picture of JU-52 planes Keystone

Switzerland’s civil aviation authority says a local airline can resume flights with vintage Junkers Ju-52 planes after one of its aircraft crashed earlier this month, on condition it take three precautionary measures. 

A 79-year-old Ju-52 operated by Ju-Air crashed on August 4, killing all 20 people on board. The cause remains unclear and may be hard to determine because the veteran plane had no black boxes. 

JU-Air stopped operations on a voluntary basis after the crash but plans to resume flying on Friday. The Federal Office of Civil AviationExternal link said on Thursday that investigations so far had unearthed no “general technical problem” with Ju-52s that justified grounding the planes. 

The first condition for the resumption of flights is that JU-Air’s two remaining vintage planes must fly above the legally prescribed minimum altitude. They must also have a GPS data recorder on board which shows each flight and enables the flight route to be analysed afterwards. Finally, passengers must wear their seat belts throughout the entire flight and may no longer walk around the plane or visit the cockpit.