A pilot who crashed his motorised glider plane into two houses in Germany during a sightseeing tour had suffered a heart attack and died before he crashed, according to a forensic report.
It is unclear at what point he died in the two-hour flight after he had the attack but it was confirmed that Roland Stanek, 79, from Magdeburg, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, was already dead when he crashed.
It is believed he was also dead as they tried to reach him while he flew over the Hanover region with his motor glider at the end of August, before crashing into two houses in the Leinebergland municipality near Hildesheim in Lower Saxony.
The Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) said in a report: “The pilot radioed that he wanted to return to Magdeburg.”
That was the last contact they had with Stanek, with the report saying: “When flying over the control zone of Hanover, the tower tried unsuccessfully to make contact via the emergency frequency.”
The BFU said that the plane then did a long left turn in the sky, with the pilot lying motionless in the cockpit.
After three hours, the plane came down at 5:20pm in the residential area and hit two homes, smashing through the wall of a house. The motor glider was completely destroyed in the crash.
The dead pilot, who had had his flying licence for 60 years, was pulled from the wreckage, with an autopsy later saying that Stanek had died of heart failure before the crash.
The pilot had taken off earlier that day, on 26th August, from the Magdeburg airfield. His friends at the flying club reportedly said: “He just wanted to do a sightseeing flight.”