An impressive accident took place off La Rochelle. A tourist plane nosedived into the open sea on the morning of July 10, 2022, reports France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The pilot, a man in his fifties, had taken off from Poitiers a little earlier when he launched the first “MAYDAY”, indicates the sub-prefecture of Charente-Maritime. In distress, he had tried to land at La Rochelle airport, then in a field before aiming for the sea.During the maneuver, the plane would have made a pirouette before sinking immediately“, specifies the media.
A dramatic situation but fortunately, the pilot was able to get out of the machine. A yachtsman who was passing nearby rescued him and then volunteers from the SNSM, the association of sea rescuers, intervened. The pilot was in a state of shock and hypothermia but miraculously escaped unscathed. The machine in question was a Cessna, a major world manufacturer of passenger aircraft.
According to the maritime prefecture, “a tourist plane crash was reported this Sunday around 10:24 a.m. The alert was issued by the pleasure boat AEGIR, which was sailing at the time near the crash site“She explains that in such situations, the nearest vessel steps in to rescue a person in distress,”it is the solidarity of the people of the sea“. The pilot then joined the mainland, more precisely the island of Ré and was admitted to the hospital center of La Rochelle. For the time being, the causes of this crash have not been determined.
Le Parisien-Today in France recalls that other accidents of this type took place in June: “three people had died in the crash of a tourist plane 15 km from Bordeaux. A few days later, two people died in the same circumstances in Haute-Savoie.“So the pilot is a very lucky survivor…