A team of 15 armed forces specialists from Germany arrived in Switzerland on Friday to investigate the crash of a German Tornado combat jet in the Swiss Alps that killed the pilot. The plane crashed into a cliff Thursday during a rare training mission granted by the Swiss to friendly air forces. Last year, only seven such training flights by foreign aircraft were allowed in Swiss airspace, according to AP. The investigation will be led by the Swiss military in collaboration with the German experts, said Philipp Umbricht, the chief of the Swiss Air Force's military justice. The crash site _ near the village of Lauterbrunnen in central Switzerland _ has been sealed off. It was unclear whether the 27-year-old pilot was able to eject before the crash. His body was found with the crash debris on the glacier below the cliff. The other crew member, a 34-year-old weapons systems officer, successfully ejected and ended up hanging by his parachute from a cliff. He appeared to have sustained only minor injuries. The surviving officer was very lucky, rescue doctor Bruno Durrer said on Swiss radio DRS. «He told us he thought it was impossible for anyone to get him out of there.» Investigators will examine the debris of the plane, which crashed at an altitude of 3,250 meters (10,660 feet), and attempt to analyze the data from the plane's black box flight recorder. Their work could be made difficult because of the risk of falling rocks and avalanches, which has increased because of rising temperatures. Swiss military pilots said the Tornado's route was questionable. «We never would have flown like that,» said Juerg Nussbaum, a spokesman for the Swiss Air Force, adding that his opinion was based on incomplete information. According to Juerg Kobert, the Swiss Air Force's air safety chief, the Tornado apparently was flying 300 meters (1,000 feet) above the Lauterbrunnen Valley floor. Kobert, however, declined to criticize the route and said he would have done the same thing if he had been given the mission. This type of flight through mountain valleys _ relying on visual references instead of instruments _ requires preflight study of local hazards such as cables or hang gliding areas beforehand. The jet came from southern France and made a refueling stop at the Swiss military airport of Emmen in central Switzerland, where the pilot also would have prepared for the next leg of his flight.
