Eleven dead in a small plane crash in eastern France | International

Eleven people died this Sunday when the small plane in which they were traveling to skydive crashed in Tomblainon the outskirts of the city of Nancy, in eastern France, authorities have reported. The deceased are the pilot and 10 other people who were going to skydive, as announced by the prefecture (government delegation) in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. It is the most serious accident that has occurred in France in this type of small aircraft. The aircraft belonged to an aerial activities school.

The accident occurred at 11:15 a.m. The plane left the Nancy-Essey airfield and was carrying five instructors and five people who were going to make their first parachute jump. “It crashed just after leaving the airfield,” announced the prefect, Yves Séguy, who traveled to the scene accompanied by representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the police and the Emergency Medical Service.

Apart from the people who were on the plane, “there are no collateral victims,” despite the fact that the plane fell near a residential area, according to Séguy. He had previously stated on social media that he had decided to activate the department’s operations center with all operational services present to follow tasks in real time.

“The plane had just taken off and crashed 300 meters from the runway,” as confirmed by the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, who traveled to the scene of the accident, together with the head of Transport, Phillipe Tabart.

“The rescue services came quickly but unfortunately they had already died,” Nuñez said. “There has not been such a major accident, in a device of these characteristics and with so many victims,” said Tabarot.

The Police have asked the population not to approach the nearby area in order to leave free access to the emergency services. The forensic identification unit has been mobilized, in collaboration with the Nancy-Metz Air Transport Gendarmerie brigade, to begin the investigation into the causes of the accident. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office will be in charge of the investigations, as confirmed by Nuñez, “due to the significant number of victims.”

The ministers did not want to advance possible causes, although the engine and controls of the device will be analyzed, a German-registered Pilatus widely used in skydiving activities and which is not equipped with black boxes, the recording devices that store flight data. The mayor of Tomblaine, Hervé Féron, explained that the plane “fell in a totally inexplicable manner during the climb phase.”

A psychological support cell has been activated for witnesses, many of them the victims’ own relatives, who were at the airfield, “which has added much more trauma to the incident,” according to the head of the Interior.