Five killed in mid-air collision involving tourist plane and microlight jet in France

A tourist plane and a microlight aircraft have collided in western France, local authorities said five died, the prosecutor said at least two were killed, but the overall toll is still uncertain.

According to reports, the small microlight carrying two people collided with a DA40 tourist plane with three people on board at about 4:30 pm local time (14:30 GMT) on Saturday in Loches in the Indre-et-Loire department, local government official Nadia Seghier informed.

“(The microlight) landed on the fence around a house without harming anyone else, (the DA40) several hundred meters away in an uninhabited area,” Seghier said. “All five people involved died.”

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“Air emergency staff from Lyon were brought in at first to track down the plane, which was quickly found,” he further said.

Gregoire Dulin, a prosecutor from nearby Tours, said that there was “little reliable information” about who was involved.”

Some 50 firefighters were called out while 30 gendarmes set up road detours around the crash sites.

Collisions between microlights and other aircraft are rare, although an August 2019 crash between a microlight and a helicopter over the Spanish island of Mallorca killed seven including two minors.

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