First picture of nurse killed in Southend Airport crash on first day of new job

This is the first pic­ture of a new­ly-mar­ried nurse killed in the plane crash at Lon­don Southend Air­port.

Wit­ness­es said it was ‘pan­de­mo­ni­um’ after the small Beechcraft B200 air­craft went up into a ‘fire­ball’ short­ly after take­off, fill­ing the sky with plumes of black smoke.

The vic­tims are believed to be four for­eign nation­als, includ­ing Maria Fer­nan­da Rojas Ortiz, 31, an unnamed Euro­pean medic and two male Dutch pilots.

A GoFundMe has been launched to help Maria’s fam­i­ly give her a ‘send off she deserves’.

A GoFundMe has been launched to help Maria’s fam­i­ly give her a ‘send off she deserves’.

A state­ment read: ‘It is with great sad­ness that we con­firm the death of our beloved Feña, in a trag­ic acci­dent that is still being inves­ti­gat­ed by the author­i­ties. We know that the pain is immense and shared by many peo­ple who loved her and accom­pa­nied her in dif­fer­ent stages of her life

It added: ‘Thank you so much for being there, for the love, for the sup­port and for every­thing that every­one has done in these dif­fi­cult days. We hugged every­one who loved her and we remain in con­tact to organ­ise our­selves.’

A friend of the nurse told The Mir­ror: ‘They were mar­ried last year. It was her first day on the job. 

She was a hos­pi­tal nurse but then took a job with a pri­vate med­ical firm, she didn’t tell any­one but this was her first day in the job.

The firm that owns the plane says there were no sur­vivors.’

Her wife can bare­ly speak, she can’t even call the police, she’s beside her­self. She’s absolute­ly dis­traught.’

The wreck­age of the Southend Air­port plane crash (Pic­tures: Sky News)

It is believed they had dropped off one patient and were head­ing back to their Nether­lands head­quar­ters in Lelystad when their plane nose­dived on Sun­day after­noon.

The medi­vac plane crashed moments after tak­ing off

Chief Super­in­ten­dent Mor­gan Cronin, who is over­see­ing the ‘com­plex’ inves­ti­ga­tion, told reporters: ‘Sad­ly, we can now con­firm that all four peo­ple on board died.

We are work­ing to offi­cial­ly con­firm their iden­ti­ties. At this stage, we believe all four are for­eign nation­als.

Our thoughts are with the fam­i­lies and their col­leagues at this trag­ic time. ‘I can promise that those who have passed away will be treat­ed with the utmost care and dig­ni­ty.’

Essex Police Chief Super­in­ten­dent Mor­gan Cronin speak­ing to the media out­side Lon­don Southend Air­port (Cred­its: Joe Giddens/PA Wire)

Southend Air­port CEO Jude Win­stan­ley said the air­port will remain closed until fur­ther notice

He said: ‘On behalf of every­one at Lon­don Southend air­port, I would like to offer our sin­cere con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies and friends of those lost in yesterday’s trag­ic inci­dent.

We would also like to thank our local com­mu­ni­ty for their mes­sages of sup­port and under­stand­ing at this dif­fi­cult time. Our staff are work­ing close­ly with the emer­gency ser­vices and air acci­dent inves­ti­ga­tors to sup­port their work.’

Lisa Fitzsi­mons, AAIB lead inves­ti­ga­tor, said her team are gath­er­ing the phys­i­cal mate­r­i­al and wit­ness state­ments to work out the cause of the crash.

She said: ‘At this stage, it is too ear­ly to spec­u­late on what may have caused this trag­ic acci­dent.

Our focus is on gath­er­ing the phys­i­cal evi­dence from the acci­dent site and inter­view­ing wit­ness­es

The remains of the air­craft will then be recov­ered to our facil­i­ty in Farn­bor­ough, Hamp­shire for fur­ther detailed inves­ti­ga­tion. Our thoughts are with the fam­i­lies and friends of every­one involved.’

The lux­u­ry plane was fly­ing only 129 feet per minute and reached 175 feet before crash­ing, data from the track­ing web­site FlightRadar24 shows.

Zeusch Avi­a­tion, based at Lelystad Air­port in the Nether­lands, con­firmed that one of its planes had crashed at the air­port.