Three people were killed on Tuesday afternoon when a Cirrus SR22T struck a mountainside above Leukerbad, in the Swiss canton of Valais.

The Kantonspolizei Wallis said the aircraft had taken off from Lugano and made an intermediate landing at Sion airport before continuing towards the airfield at Buochs, in Nidwalden. Shortly after 16:00 it collided with the northern slope in the Fluhalp area. The cause is not established.

People in the area reported heavy smoke. Rescue crews from the cantonal rescue organisation KWRO 144 reached the site with three helicopters and two rescue specialists, and were able only to confirm that all three occupants had died. Formal identification is still under way.

What the police have said

The cantonal police statement, published on Wednesday, is brief and deliberately limited to what is known.

Alongside the cantonal police and KWRO, the fire services of Leukerbad and of Sion airport attended, together with the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board and specialists from the Vaud cantonal police who carried out technical securing work at the site.

Two separate investigations are now running. SUST is examining the cause of the accident. The Federal Prosecutor, working with the Valais cantonal police, handles the criminal side. The police stressed that the two proceed in parallel and in close coordination — standard practice in Switzerland after a fatal aviation accident, and not an indication that anything improper is suspected.

The aircraft and the route

The Cirrus SR22T is a single-engine, four to five seat composite aircraft, turbocharged and among the most widely flown high-performance piston singles in general aviation. Nothing about the type is unusual for a flight of this kind.

Nor is the route. Lugano to Sion to Buochs is an ordinary Swiss cross-country: south of the Alps, over to the Rhône valley, then north across the mountains towards central Switzerland. It is flown regularly and in good weather it is unremarkable.

Beyond that, it would be wrong to speculate. Weather, terrain, performance, serviceability and human factors are all things an investigation exists to establish, and SUST reports take time precisely because getting it right matters more than getting it quickly. Anything said now about why a serviceable aircraft met a mountainside would be guesswork dressed as analysis.

The people who went up

One detail in the police statement is easy to read past: three helicopters and two rescue specialists were airborne to the site within a very short time of the first reports.

Valais has one of the most capable mountain rescue systems anywhere, built over decades in a canton where the terrain gives no margin. On Tuesday that system did everything it could do, and arrived to find there was nothing left to do. That is the part of these accounts that rarely gets written down.

Three people did not come home. SUST will publish what it finds.

Sources: Kantonspolizei Wallis; Schweizerische Sicherheitsuntersuchungsstelle (SUST); aeroTELEGRAPH; SRF; 20 Minuten.