THE fire fighting plane which crashed on Sunday, killing pilot Enrique Carré, had been overhauled on August 4 and no faults had been detected. Its licence was valid until April 2006. This was confirmed yesterday by Jaume Font, the minister of the environment, who said that the Balearic government's priorities, on the instructions of leader Jaume Matas, were to support the pilot's family and to collaborate in the investigtion of the cause of the accident. Enrique Carré, 61, was helping fight a forest fire in Escorca when his Air Tractor plane hit the side of a mountain shortly before 11am on Sunday as he was about to release its load of water over the fire. He had already completed a successful run. A forest guard witnessed the crash, and the explosion was also observed by one of the fire fighting brigades and the crew of a helicopter which was also helping to extinguish the blaze, which destroyed less than one hectare of land between the Gorg Blau and Cuber reservoirs. Carré was an experienced pilot with more than 18'000 hours of flying, both for the army and Iberia. His son works for the Balearic Nature Institute (Ibanat) which was closely involved in the extinction of the fire. Font underlined the pilot's high professional standards and dedication to his work, but declined to speculate on the possible cause of the accident.
He said that weather conditions had been good and the plane, built in 1998, had passed the technical inspection which is obligatory after every 100 hours of flight. A team of experts from the Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Committee arrived in Majorca yesterday to investigate the cause of the accident.
The accident caused major traffic problems on the road between Soller and Lluc.
This was the first fatal accident involving a fire fighting plane in the Balearics.
Carré was the third person to die in such an accident in Spain, the two previous deaths both occurred in Orense (Galicia) in June and on August 6.
Thirty-two people have died in this type of accident since 1990.
Team to investigate fatal fire fighting plane crash
PILOT HAD MORE THAN 18,000 HOURS FLYING EXPERIENCE