Swiss Find Crashed Air Force Plane, Searching for Pilot

Swiss search parties found an air force fighter jet that went missing on Monday during a training exercise but were still trying to find the pilot, the Swiss defense ministry said on Tuesday.

The plane, a one-seat F/A-18C, crashed near Susten in central Switzerland. Bad weather was hampering the search in the mountainous terrain.

This incident marks the third time the Swiss Air Force has lost one of its F/A 18 jets over the past three years. In October 2015 a pilot was injured when an aircraft went down in southeast France, and another F/A 18 crashed in Switzerland in 2013.

Swiss Air Force Commander Aldo Schellenberg told a media conference he was deeply shocked by the incident.

The incident began when the aircraft took off from the air base at Meiringen on Monday as the second plane in a training exercise. Radio contact with the base was lost four minutes after takeoff.