Zeusch Aviation, a Dutch charter company, owned the aircraft and subsequently verified that it was their SUZ1 flight. The aircraft had just finished a flight that had started in Athens, Greece, and went on to Pula, Croatia, before landing briefly at Southend. Lelystad, Netherlands, was to be its ultimate destination. The company has said it is fully assisting authorities in determining what went wrong during what should have been a routine leg of the journey, even though the cause of the crash is still unknown.
Witnesses characterized the scene as frightening and unreal. Longtime Billericay resident John Johnson, who was observing from a nearby field, told the BBC that the plane took off without incident before everything abruptly changed. “It began to rise like any other flight,” he remembered, “but all of a sudden it banked violently to the left.” It was nearly upside down in a matter of seconds. Then it simply fell. No mayday, no warning. Then the explosion occurred.
