An 8-seater twin-engine plane from Spain crashed in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Latvia on Sunday after a long absence of radio contact, the French Air Force said in a statement. The aircraft, a CESSNA 551 registered in Austria, coming from Jerez in Spain, was escorted by the French and then German air police during its passage through Belgian, Luxembourg and then German airspace. Passengers on board? “According to the flight manifest, the plane, a Cessna 551, was carrying 4 passengers” and “was on a flight from Spain to Cologne (Germany) but when it changed course during the flight, the air dispatchers n ‘were no longer able to contact him,” the Latvian aviation agency said. The nationalities of the four people on board were not disclosed. “We have no explanation, we can only speculate,” said Swedish rescue chief Lars Antonsson. “But on board, they were clearly unable” to react. Pressure problem? Alerted by the Spanish authorities to probable difficulties in pressurizing the aircraft, the Lyon Mont Verdun National Air Operations Center (CNOA) ordered the take-off of a Rafale on alert, but attempts to make radio contact proved unsuccessful. and visual contact did not reveal any activity in the cockpit, details the Air Force. In Germany, approaching Cologne, a Lutwaffe Eurofighter took over to watch the aircraft. The CESSNA continued on its way beyond Cologne and then crashed in the Baltic Sea off the Latvian coast around 7:45 p.m., the statement continued. An investigation should shed light on the causes of the accident. chevron_leftchevron_right