A group of government and company officials left Lydda airport last night for Zurich to investigate the crash of an El Al EC-4 freighter plane three miles north of the Swiss city in which six of the seven crew members perished. Three of the dead and the survivor are Americans. The crash, which took place while the plane was preparing to land at the Zurich airport, is the second disaster in El Al’s history. The earlier one occurred when a plane caught fire at the Lydda airport before the passengers or crew had boarded it. Yesterday’s crash took place at 6 A.M. The plane was on the Rome-Amsterdam leg of a Lydda -Amsterdam flight when the disaster occurred.
The dead are Pilot Captain Theodore Gibson, of Miami, Florida; Co-pilot Captain Robert Constant, of Manchester, New Hampshire; Navigator George Henninger, Of Flint, Michigan; Morgen Jensen, of Copenhagen, Denmark; First Office Terence Melly, of Johannesburg, South Africa; and Shlomo Levity, of Rehovoth, Israel. The survivor, radio operator Michael Querzia, is from Brooklyn.
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