This is a moot point.

+1

One can fly for commercial and military at the same time.

According to the Ju-Air website their airplanes have BMW 132A3 engines which according to Wikipedia have a take-off rating of 725hp and a continuous rating of 550hp (of which app. 500hp are used in cruise according to Ju-Air), so the power loss at that altitude would not be that dramatic.

I don't think that this operation is certified according to normal passenger transport standards as it is performed by an association (like the Swiss Connie) and you have to be a member to take part in the flights. I hope this modus of operation will not be closed as a result of this accident and the opportunity to get a first-hand experience of flying 1930's (or any later era's) style will remain open to an informed public willing to take the risk

There will inevitably come a day when the last piston airliner will have to be shut down for the last time and reduced to a static display, but I hope that this day is still well in the future.

Arkroyal, a lot of Swiss military flying is done by reservists, so some of their airline time will have been concurrent.

I don't know if the two-day trip schedule was a one-off, compared to normal operations which I suppose will be hourly or day trips. A cancellation isn't a big thing then. But here we have a group that is more or less expecting to fly home in time (at least the day that was planned). It must have put extra pressure on the guys up front, to at least give it a try.
These operators/organisations/clubs need cash flow to continue flying their expensive planes.
Here in our country an organization that operates a Catalina has been forced to stop due to lack of cash flow. Because last Year it was involved in a minor incident (stuck nose gear) and the resulting time it took to get repairs done, took out the best part of the flying season, depleting the little reserves that were there.
Many of these clubs lack the deep pockets like Red Bull has to keep everything in mint condition and don't care if a show or trip gets cancelled.

Its not unusual for pilots to have 2 careers concurrently in many countries think of the air national guard in america.

Bit rude aren't we?

Ref. that Swiss TV picture(screenshot)
It appears unrelated to the crashed flight!! The Text attached to that TV picture only says: One of the last pictures of the flight. Neither does it state wether that JU52? is actually HB-HOT, nor does it state the date when the picture was taken. Good guess it is just the normal journo crap - Mr. T would call it "fake news"
Canton Glarus is north of the crash site. Enter "Chamm, Glarus" on Google Earth (Maps) and it will show a mountainous place to the north of the accident site. It´s nowhere said or written that they crossed that ridge next to "Martinsloch" and returned crossing that ridge again !!

Thank you for the flowers, dear EDLB. Yes, I did cross the mountains many time on a piston engine. Thats why I consider myself as qualified to talk "rubbish". What's really rubbish is the ceiling cited in Wikipedia, at least for the JU-52 operated nowadays.
Let's see what the accident investigation has to say about this.

And who decides that? I was lucky enough to fly on a B17 and no one dared question my ability to determine if it was safe. That was my decision.

How many can and do survive 16G seat loads.

I am aware of the standard, just doubt it is practical since they are happy with standard weights in such tests.

Last summer I survived a crash where I was ejected through the windshield, having ripped out the 9G seat and seatbelt. That means my body was subjected to a minimum of 12G, though more likely 15G. That causes injuries, though is survivable. Through the evolution of the standards, seat and seatbelt strength requirements have been made more demanding - for the most part, going from less than 6G calculated, through 9G static load test to 18G dynamic load test. I have done STC approval projects on vintage aircraft for modernized passenger carrying (Grumman Goose was one), generally in such cases, more modern standards are applied to the STC approval. I have no specific knowledge of the Ju52, though I would think it might have had a seat refit done prior to re-entering passenger carrying service, and common practice would have that seat refit done to a stronger standard than original. That said, from the crash photos, it does not appear that seat strength would have been a factor in surviveabilty.

There is a very nice video of sister plane flying through the beautiful Swiss landscape on Youtube under title "Junkers Ju 52 -> Tante JU Spectacular Flight through Swiss Alps from Gstaad"
(I can't post URL's yet).

May they rest in peace.

Exactly.

There are millions of cars on our streets that don´t have the latest safety equipment build in. Scrap em ! (?)

Hello Z/Z
thanks for the kind help. However I intentially used the word "unrelated". The outgoing flight from Dübendorf to Locarno went via the Gotthard Massiv.The Gotthard routing is well west of the Chamm mountain area in Kanton Glarus. The return flight followed a more easterly rounting to cover the "highlight" Martinsloch, the hole in the rockwall of that ridge they wanted to cross. The accident site is still within the limits of Kanton Graubünden / Grisons .
So neither on the flight on August, 3 nor on the return flight on August,4 HB-HOT could be spotted in the Chamm Mountain Area before the accident.
In my opinion, what happened here is a journalist in a great hurry wanted to sell his story first, grabbed whatever picture or video of a JU 52 flying in the mountains and added it to his/her report.
I use to call such an approach to the facts of a story "Journos crap" and as side kick to the plague of the "Twitter King" in the US I have named it like he would do.
Just for info!!
Jo

That an operator of a certain type of aircraft decides to impose a lower ceiling than previous operators have done before, or that the aircraft has been certified to before, does not mean that the previously certified ceiling is invalid.