Bulgarian military helicopter crashes during exercise
A Bulgarian military helicopter crashed during a training exercise on 11 June evening near the southern city of Plovdiv, killing two of the three men onboard, the Bulgarian Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
The Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopter burst into flames after coming down from a height of 50m at around 8:30 pm local time (17:30 GMT) not far from the Krumovo military airbase and Plovdiv's civilian airport.
The MoD said in a statement: ‘Two of the crew – the commander and the co-pilot were killed in the fall of the helicopter. The third crew member – the board mechanic – was immediately transported to hospital, (he was) conscious.’
The cause of the accident was not immediately known, it added.
The helicopter was Bulgaria's only operational Mi-17 and mainly used for firefighting in difficult terrains.
The accident is the second deadly crash involving a Bulgarian military helicopter in the last 12 months.
In June 2017 a AS565 Panther of the Bulgarian Navy plunged into the Black Sea during a military exercise off the coast of Varna, killing the pilot.
A risky manoeuver and bad weather were then cited as causes of the accident but Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, a former Air Force Chief, also blamed insufficient flight hours.
Bulgaria's outdated military equipment, most of which was bought during communism and is Soviet-made, has often caused tensions in the military, with pilots at the country's major Graf Ignatievo airbase refusing to fly MiG-29 jets in October 2017 over safety concerns. Public tenders for new equipment have been sidetracked for years.
But on 8 June 2018 Bulgaria's parliament approved plans to spend more than $1.9 billion on new fighter jets and armoured carriers.
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