Aircraft grounded after Romania crash

Deputy IAF chief tells 'Post': We must stop and think of the families.

311_Yasour (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
311_Yasour
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
ROMANIA - The IAF decided to ground all training aircraft on Tuesday, in the wake of a fatal helicopter crash in Romania which left six IAF servicemen and one Romanian soldier dead the previous day.
“It is important that we stop and think about the families and the missing servicemen,” Brig. Gen. Nimrod Shefer, deputy commander of the IAF, told The Jerusalem Post.
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He also stated that the IAF had decided to end the Blue Sky 2010 joint search-and-rescue exercise with the Romanian air force on Tuesday and that the remaining participating Israeli aircraft would return to Israel on Wednesday.
The exercise had been originally schedule to Friday, July 30.
Shefer told the Post that the IAF Unit 669 search and rescue team was en route to the crash site of the Yasour helicopter which went down on Monday.
He said that the crew aboard the helicopter that crashed was one of the most experienced teams in the IAF. “This is one of the best crews that we could have had there. They had loads of experience,” Shefer said.