Plane crash in Romania

Mondays plane crash in western Romania, which killed 2, led to the resignation of the interior minister and other officials.

Bogdan Matei, 23.01.2014, 13:34

All week, TV news channels in Romania have been discussing the forced landing of a small plane in a forested area in the Apuseni Mountains in very bad weather. The plane carried a group of doctors specialising in transplant surgery. The pilot and a young intern were killed, while the co-pilot and four other doctors were injured.

The accident quickly became a sensational media topic, partly because the pilot was already known to the public for his involvement in the shooting of a man a few years ago, a case ruled as self-defence by the court but suspected of being a crime of passion by the tabloid media. Having retired from the state airline company, he had conducted 30 flights in the last 2 years for the National Transplant Agency, many by the very plane that crashed this week.

As for the rescue operations, the authorities in Bucharest concluded that they started very late and ended 7 hours after the crash. The first to reach the crash site was not the rescue team, but a forestry worker from the region. “We have to establish individual responsibility for this failure, improve our procedures and at some point even reflect on the way in which we spend public money”, said prime minister Victor Ponta. He pointed out that the interior ministry body in charge of monitoring air traffic, ROMATSA, and the Special Telecommunications Service were unacceptably slow to respond, lacked coordination and failed to take on responsibility.

The Liberal interior minister Radu Stroe has resigned following harsh criticism, including from within his own party. The ROMATSA director general and head of operations and the head of the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations have also resigned. The Social Democratic prime minister has also replaced an interior ministry state secretary appointed by the National Liberal Party and says he will propose the replacement of the head of the Special Telecommunications Service. According to the media, this makes the whole scandal political, because the person in question is seen as president Traian Basescu’s man.

The first vice-president of the Liberal Democratic Party in opposition reacted quickly, saying he will file an official complaint against the two ministers for negligence.