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Summit Landing

DW staff (sms)May 4, 2008

A pilot has successfully landed his plane on Germany's highest mountain in the first such landing in 50 years.

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Huber's plane
The pilot found the landing strip on the first attemptImage: AP

Pilot Tom Huber set his small Savage Classic D-MERG plane down Saturday, May 3, on a 2,600-meter-high (8530-foot-high) plateau on Bavaria's Zugspitze.

"It worked on the first approach," Huber's spokeswoman, Eva-Maria Greimel, told reporters. "The sun wasn't shining so it was hard for the pilot to make out the contours of the landing strip."

The 37-year-old pilot was given special permission to land the plane on the 2,962-meter (9718-foot) mountain in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in a stunt marking the end of the winter season. The last time a plane successfully landed on the mountain was in 1958.

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