Aeronautical Academy of Europe training flight
Aeronautical Academy of Europe (AAE) Piper PA-34 Seneca · Cause unknown
From Seville to Évora
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09RA590
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Piper PA-34 Seneca
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-34
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- OO-TML 3449089
- Onboard fatalities
- 3
- Route
- From SevilleTo Évora
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Not recorded
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Not recorded
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Castro Verde, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
From the Wikipedia article
A training flight of the Aeronautical Academy of Europe (also known as Academia Aeronáutica de Évora, abbreviation AAE) departed on 15 September 2009 from the city of Seville in Spain bound for Évora and crashed near Castro Verde in Portugal.
It was a training flight of the Nationale Luchtvaartschool (NLS) from Hoofddorp that was operated by the sister organisation AAE. On board were 2 Dutch students aged 18 and 20 and a Spanish instructor aged 27. Around 22.30 the aircraft, a Piper PA-34-220T Seneca V that was owned by the Belgian aviation school Ben Air Flight Academy (BAFA) and had been in use at AAE for a year, crashed, and all occupants were killed.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Dutch Wikipedia article “Aeronautical Academy of Europe-lesvlucht” (revision 67231556, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
On September 15, 2009, at 2055 Western European Summer Time, a Piper PA-34-220T, OO-TML, registered to Ben-Air Flight Academy was destroyed upon impact with terrain during a night navigation training flight. The airplane had disappeared from radar and no communication contact could be established. The flight instructor and two students were fatally injured. The wreckage was discovered at 2145 spread over a large area.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Portugal. This report is for information purposes only and contains only information released by the Government of Portugal. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Praça Duque de Saldanha, 31 - 4º 1050-094 LISBOA
Web: http://www.gpiaa.gov.pt
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Dutch Wikipedia article: Aeronautical Academy of Europe-lesvlucht
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 67231556 · 2024-03-20 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q2393538
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record CEN09RA590
- Event ID
- 20090917X60254
- Case number
- CEN09RA590
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- nl Wikipedia article "Aeronautical Academy of Europe-lesvlucht" (page 1717990, revision 67231556), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case CEN09RA590 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record CEN09RA590
- Map position
- NTSB record CEN09RA590: centre of the town the record names (GeoNames, CC BY 4.0)
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record CEN09RA590
- Operation
- Reviewed correction (2026-09-26): A flight school training flight with students and an instructor: general aviation. The article: "It was a training flight of the Nationale Luchtvaartschool (NLS) from Hoofddorp that was operated by the sister organisation AAE."
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Aeronautical Academy of Europe training flight" and NTSB case CEN09RA590, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.