FUKUOKA - A light aircraft carrying three people that departed from Saga Airport on the morning of November 19th was found crashed in the mountains of Hoshino Village in Yame City, Fukuoka Prefecture, where emergency crews recovered three bodies whose identities and genders have yet to be confirmed.
The first report came at around 10:40 a.m. when a witness alerted the fire department, saying something resembling an aircraft had fallen and black smoke was rising from the mountains. Firefighters and police gathered near the location, approximately 2.7 kilometers into a forest road in Hoshino Village.
A fire department helicopter spotted the crash site from the air at around 12:30 p.m., nearly two hours after the initial call. Rescue operations began immediately, with crews seeing white fragments caught in tree branches along with what appeared to be charred parts of the fuselage. From above, faint flames and smoke were still visible, and debris believed to be parts of the aircraft were widely scattered around the area.
At a command post set up along the forest road, police and fire officials spread out maps as they worked to pinpoint the exact crash location.
According to Saga Airport authorities, the aircraft was a Cirrus SR20, a small private plane owned by an individual. It took off from Saga Airport at 10:13 a.m., and about 20 minutes later transmitted a distress signal from the vicinity of Hoshino Village before all contact was lost. The aircraft had been parked at the airport since the previous day.
On November 19th, the plane was carrying three men believed to be residents of Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures, with an expected arrival at Osaka Airport shortly after 12:30 p.m.
By around 1:30 p.m., firefighters searching the mountainous area near the Oita Prefecture border located the three occupants in a state of cardiac arrest. Police later confirmed that three bodies of unknown gender had been recovered. The aircraft was found torn apart into multiple pieces.
Investigators from the Japan Transport Safety Board are expected to enter the crash site as early as November 20th to begin examining the cause of the accident.
Source: KBC
