© picture alliance / MAXPPP | ALEXANDRE MARCHI
On Sunday, eleven people were killed in a plane crash near Nancy. A pilot, five instructors, and five nurses who were about to make their first skydive lost their lives. According to the president of the French Parachuting Federation, the plane took off “at the worst possible moment.”
The small plane, a Pilatus that had dropped skydivers on Saturday and again that morning before the tragedy, began taking off from the small Nancy-Essey airport, but suddenly crashed about 300 meters from the runway, on the edge of a residential neighborhood. None of the occupants survived the impact. An investigation will now determine the cause of the accident. What makes the tragedy even worse is that family members and friends of the victims witnessed the crash.
Just a few days ago, the French Parachuting Federation had received a memo from the Ministry of Sports asking it to limit its activities during the heat wave, including skydiving.
However, private aircraft in general aviation have their own rules, even when they offer sports activities. Yves-Marie Guillaud, the federation’s president, has been lamenting this for years.
“The Ministry of Sports has asked us not to organize any activities during such heat,” he explains in an interview with franceinfo. According to him, the jump in Nancy also took place at the “worst possible time”: “It was a tandem skydiving activity carried out at the worst possible time—namely, late morning or early afternoon, right in the middle of the heat. In our clubs, we jump in the morning when it’s still cool, and by the end of the morning, we’re done. In the evening after 6:00 p.m., we slowly start up again once it cools down a bit. But during the day, there’s absolutely nothing to do."
A small plane of this type does not have a black box, so investigators will have to rely on video footage taken by the victims themselves from inside the aircraft or by witnesses to the accident.
Picture: © picture alliance / MAXPPP | ALEXANDRE MARCHI