Light aircraft crash near Loch Lomond kills boy of 16 and man of 80

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A 16-year-old boy and an 80-year-old man were killed when a light aircraft crashed near Drymen, north-east of Glasgow, on Friday afternoon. Police Scotland said both victims were pronounced dead at the scene, with next of kin informed. The flight departed Glasgow Airport shortly after 4.15pm, according to the Standard, and the aircraft stopped transmitting around 20 minutes into the flight. Emergency services were called to the crash site, close to the village of Drymen near Loch Lomond in Stirling, at around 4.45pm. Temporary airspace restrictions, including a ban on drone flights, have been imposed around the village and police warned that flying through the restricted zone is a criminal offence. Gavin Birch-Williams, managing director of Glasgow Airport, confirmed the incident involved a light aircraft that had departed from the field. "This is a deeply tragic event, and the thoughts and heartfelt sympathies from all at Glasgow Airport are with the friends and families affected," he said. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has opened an investigation and dispatched a team to the site to gather evidence as part of a safety investigation. The restrictions are expected to remain in place for some time. The two ages on the casualty list — a teenager and an octogenarian — will frame the AAIB's first questions about who was at the controls and what qualification they held. Light aviation is Europe's least supervised corner of the sky: no airline operations department, no route checks, no inspector on board. The entire risk burden rests on the private owner and the licence in that owner's pocket. Whatever the report eventually says, the aircraft had already gone quiet twenty minutes after takeoff, and the people who can explain why are the two who did not come back.