Student pilot killed in plane crash was 26-year-old Brit who lived on Spain’s Costa del Sol

IT’S BEEN revealed that a British man was one of the two victims in Wednesday’s light aircraft crash in Almeria’s Cabo de Gata natural park.

The pilot has been named as 24-year-old Rafael Ricote, who worked as an instructor at the Malaga-based ‘One Air Diamond Flight Centre’.

Ricote, from Cordoba, was tutoring a 26-year-old British national according to the SUR newspaper.

He’s been named as ‘Marcus’, who is said to have lived in the Malaga area.

As previously reported by the Olive Press, the victims were on a night training flight to Valencia which had departed from El Trapiche airfield in Velez-Malaga at around 11:00pm. 

After making a stopover at Almería’s airport for refuelling, the aircraft suddenly fell from the sky 90 minutes later in the Cerro del Fraile area.

It’s not known what caused the accident with no emergency calls being made from the plane beforehand.

Human error is being considered as an option as there were no obvious signs of mechanical failure.

Almería’s firefighting teams and the mountain group of the Guardia Civil from Granada worked to find and retrieve the victims from the remote location.