There was a fatal plane crash while fighting a fire in Portugal in 2022, according to an annual report on operational safety performance.
In July 2022, loss of control of the aircraft after manually loading water led to a crash that killed the pilot fighting a fire in Torre de Moncorvo. According to data collected by the National Civil Aviation Authority (ANAC), there was another non-fatal accident in an ultralight aircraft that same year.
In turn, “indicators for commercial air transport are consistently positive, with incidents in Portugal including one fatal in 2018 involving a helicopter that collided with elevated ground in poor weather conditions,” the report states.
Following this incident, in which an INEM helicopter collided with a broadcast tower in the Santa Justa mountain range in Valongo, killing four passengers, there were no further incidents in commercial air transport in Portugal until the end of 2022.
In terms of the number of cases reported to ANAC, a new high of 6,961 was reached in 2022, surpassing the previous high of 2019 with 6,397 cases. Most of them are related to the presence of odors, especially fuel, in household appliances.