Pilot hurt as drifting plane hits four aircraft at Austrian airfield

A light aircraft drifted off course while taking off at Krimml, in Austria's Zell am See district, on Sunday morning and collided with four parked aircraft, injuring three people, Austrian police and the Red Cross said. The pilot suffered severe injuries and was airlifted by rescue helicopter to hospital in Schwarzach; a female passenger on board suffered minor injuries and was taken to hospital in Zell am See by the Red Cross.

The collision happened on the ground; neither the moving aircraft nor the parked ones crashed or caught fire, Austrian newspapers Kurier and Der Standard reported. A third person, who had been standing near the parked aircraft, also received medical treatment at the scene but did not need to be taken to hospital.

The Red Cross deployed twelve emergency workers to the airfield. A spokeswoman for the organisation told the Austrian Press Agency that the severely injured person's life was not in danger.

Salzburg's public prosecutor's office appointed an aviation expert to help establish the cause of the accident, police said. The aircraft that veered off course has been seized, and Salzburg's state criminal police office has taken over the investigation. The cost of the damage was not yet known, though with five light aircraft affected it was likely to be considerable, police said.