An Israeli Air Force officer and a soldier died Wednesday afternoon after their plane crashed during a training flight in southern Israel. Private Ilan Carmi, 19, of Herzliya, and his instructor, Captain Matan Asa, 24, of Yavneh, were both killed in the crash. The families of the two airmen have been notified.

 

No emergency call was received by the flight tower at the base, according to IAF Chief of Staff Yochanan Locker. The plane was also reportedly flying at a relatively low altitude at the time of the crash.

 

Neither was Carmi a green recruit; he had many hours of flight time logged during the year and a half that he had already served in the pilots' training program. Moreover, his flight instructor was also a highly experienced pilot who was an officer in the reserves.

 

An IDF spokesman would not confirm or deny a report that the base has been on high alert for the past several days. Nor would the IDF comment on rumors that there had been an infiltration into the base in the wee hours of the morning early Wednesday.

 

The plane, a Tzukit-type aircraft, crashed while flying in a training zone 30 minutes after taking off from the Hatzerim Air Force base, home to the IAF's Flight School, approximately five miles east of Be'er Sheva.

 

The Tzukit, which first took to the air in September of 1980, was developed from the French Fouga Magister. The small twin-engine Fouga had been revamped by Israel Aircraft Industries and outfitted for carrying advanced motors and equipment.

 

All of the Tzukit planes, which were modified several times at the request of the Air Force, were delivered to the IAF by 1986 and have been used regularly since to train new cadets for basic and advanced jet flight maneuvers. The Tzukit has also performed in the IAF aerobatic unit.

 

Israel Air Force Commander Major-General Ido Nechushtan has appointed a colonel to head an official commission of inquiry to investigate the incident, said the spokesman.

 

This was the second training crash to occur in as many months. In September, two veteran reserve pilots died when a Cobra attack helicopter crashed during a training flight in northern Israel. All Cobra squadrons have remained grounded in the wake of the fatal accident while investigators continue to probe the cause of the tragedy.