a ceremony organized for the thirty years of one of the worst air disasters

Opposite Mont Sainte-Odile (Alsace), on the snowy slopes of the Blossom, the Airbus A320 crashed in the middle of the forest on January 20, 1992 at 6:30 p.m. Thirty years later to the day, Jean-Pierre Stucki retraces the path. A journalist at the time, he and his colleague were the first to arrive on the scene with three other residents. “We could smell very strongly the smell of burning, of kerosene”, he recalls. The survivors were gathered around a fire, with “the cabin of the aircraft that we glimpsed behind“, describes the former journalist.

With 90 passengers on board and six crew members, the plane fell for more than four hours, without any help having arrived yet, while we are at the gates of Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin). A disorganization of relief, on which justice has never started proceedings. Judicial slowness too, after thirteen years of investigation, two trials and six defendants totally released. The Mont Sainte-Odile crash represents a life for the former president of the victims’ association, Alvaro Render. A ceremony will take place Sunday at the end of the morning on the scene of the disaster, for the thirty years of the tragedy.