Rokovci Plane Crash: Pilot, 64, Dies Near Vinkovci
A 64 year old pilot from Osijek died on Friday when his ultralight crashed into a cornfield near Rokovci, close to the Sopot airport. Unofficial reports say the plane was not registered.
A small plane crashed on Friday, September 18, at around 10:05 a.m. in a cornfield near Rokovci, close to the Sopot airport in Vinkovci, in eastern Croatia. The pilot, 64, from Osijek, died despite attempts to resuscitate him, police confirmed to the Croatian news portal Index.hr.
All emergency services were sent to the scene, including a helicopter from Croatia’s Emergency Medical Service. Crews reached the site quickly, but nothing could be done to save the pilot. Police immediately opened an investigation to establish the exact circumstances of the crash.
“Once we complete the on site investigation and gather all the information, we will determine the circumstances of this event,” said Dragoslav Zivkovic, spokesman for the Vukovar-Srijem Police Department.
According to unofficial reports, the aircraft was a several year old ultralight plane of the Cangaroo type, which was not registered at the time of the crash. Citing the Croatian outlet RTL Danas, Index.hr reported that the plane apparently had not been started up in a long time. Index.hr, citing its own sources, added that the pilot had not planned to fly at all that morning: he had only wanted to test the engine on the ground.
The pilot was well known to Milenko Bucalovic, a flight instructor with more than 30 years of experience. Bucalovic said the man he affectionately called “Mile” was a familiar face in Croatia’s aviation community, even though he was not a professional pilot by trade: he worked as an auto body painter.
“I can say he was a very dear colleague. He helped all of us with painting our planes, since he was an auto body painter by profession and had painted many aircraft across Croatia,” Bucalovic said.
Bucalovic added that the plane in which the pilot died was a single seater with just 45 horsepower, very different in its characteristics from the aircraft pilots normally train on.
“It’s a rather different plane from the one Mile trained on. It’s a very lively aircraft with little horsepower, while training is normally done on school planes that have significantly different performance from that ultralight model,” Bucalovic explained.
The exact cause of the crash will be established by Croatia’s Agency for the Investigation of Accidents in Air, Maritime and Railway Traffic. According to the agency, preliminary findings on the Vinkovci crash are expected within 30 days, while the full investigation, which must cover every detail, could take at least a year. This year alone the agency has already investigated four aviation accidents and two serious incidents, and Croatia has recorded a total of 197 such incidents over the past ten years. That figure covers all types of aircraft, not only ultralights like the one that crashed near Rokovci, but it shows the agency deals with dozens of similar cases across the country every year.
Agency director Alenka Vukic has previously explained the most common causes of small plane crashes in Croatia.
“One of the most common causes are flights crossing from inland areas to the coast. Pilots sometimes underestimate weather conditions over our mountains, for example over Velebit,” Vukic said.
The on site investigation and the inquiry that follows should show whether weather had anything to do with the crash near Rokovci. The fact that the plane was not registered at the time of the crash remains one of the questions investigators need to clarify, since proper documentation makes it easier to establish an aircraft’s technical condition before an accident.
