Tragedy in France, a private plane rented by a parachuting club crashed in the east, near Nancy, before the “baptism” of the jump which would have happened to the 5 students, all nurses who wanted to “relax” after the days of tension in the hospital due to the extreme heat. With them there were as many instructors and the pilot. Having taken off from Nancy, the plane suddenly seemed to lose altitude, and then went into a vertical fall. The impact occurred in Tomblaine, a nearby town, where no collateral victims have been reported.
The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nunez, and the Minister of Transport, Philippe Tabarot, rushed to the scene of the disaster – the most serious in history in France regarding private planes. «Some of the victims’ families – said Nunez – were present at the airport and witnessed the fall of the plane. They were entrusted to a medical-psychological emergency cell.” Yves Séguy, the prefect of the Region, was the first to explain that the plane, a “Pilatus” registered in Germany, had been rented by the parachuting club for the “tandem” baptism of five interns together with their 5 instructors. The take-off took place around 11am from the Nancy-Essey aerodrome and the accident occurred almost immediately, shortly after the end of the runway, near the first houses in Tomblaine: «It rose up, then immediately crashed 300 meters from the end of the runway», confirmed Nunez.
A failure was the cause of the crash
Séguy specified that the aircraft “fell vertically” and that “a fault caused the accident”. However, the precise cause is still unknown, an investigation will examine the various hypotheses. Pierre-Yves Eugène, president of the parachutists’ union, interviewed by Bfm TV, declared that the Pilatus is “a device that involves rigorous checks” and that whoever pilots it “must pass an exam every two years”. To the same broadcaster, a woman, who had her first parachute jump from the same plane yesterday, reported that “everything had gone well”. The technicians and investigators from the aviation research and investigation section have already rushed to the scene to recover any useful traces and any videos shot by passengers with cell phones. The Pilatus is not equipped with a black box, so each element will be fundamental to understanding the origin of the disaster. The accident required the intervention of 50 firefighters with the use of 25 vehicles.