Pilot killed in crash-landing
The pilot of a small private aircraft was killed and his three passengers were seriously injured on Saturday during an emergency landing near a military airport in central Greece. The Athens Aeroclub’s Cessna 320 Skynight, a light twin-engined aircraft, was on a training flight when pilot Emmanouil Stergioudakis realized the plane’s hydraulics system was not working, according to the Athens News Agency. He radioed for instructions to Athens airport, which directed him to the Tanagra military airbase, some 70 kilometers northwest of Athens, which was the nearest available airport. But Stergioudakis did not make it that far, and crash-landed badly in an olive grove near Tanagra. He died instantly in the crash, while his passengers, Andreas Stamos, Panayiotis Katsianos and Costas Dionyssopoulos, were taken to hospital in Halkida, from where the two more seriously injured men were transferred to the Athens KAT hospital.
