A military plane crash has killed two people in Algeria, the fighter jet crashed during an overnight training exercise, killing its crew members.
According to the defence ministry, the Russian-made Sukhoi SU-24 plane went down in an uninhabited farming area in the province of Tiaret, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) southwest of Algiers.
The pilot and co-pilot were killed during the “night-time training flight”, it said, adding that it was investigating the causes of the accident.
It was the first such incident since the country’s worst military plane crash that killed 257 people in April last year at a military base near Algiers.
In aviation, an accident is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, and in which a)
a person is fatally or seriously injured, b) the aircraft sustains significant damage or structural failure, or c) the aircraft goes missing or becomes completely inaccessible. Annex 13 defines an incident as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft that affects or could affect the safety of operation.
A hull loss occurs if an aircraft is destroyed, damaged beyond repair, lost, or becomes completely inaccessible.
The first fatal aviation accident was the crash of a Rozière balloon near Wimereux, France, on June 15, 1785, killing the balloon’s inventor, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, and the other occupant, Pierre Romain.
The first involving a powered aircraft was the crash of a Wright Model A aircraft at Fort Myer, Virginia, in the United States on September 17, 1908, injuring its co-inventor and pilot, Orville Wright, and killing the passenger, Signal Corps Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.