NANCY, France (AP) — A skydiving plane crashed in northeastern France on Sunday, killing all 11 people on board, authorities said.
The plane suffered a malfunction and “fell almost vertically” soon after taking off from the Nancy-Essey airfield on the outskirts of the city of Nancy, the region's prefect, Yves Séguy, said.
It crashed on the edge of a built-up area near the airfield, he told broadcaster BFM-TV.
“Had it occurred just a few dozen meters away, the accident could have caused collateral casualties,” Séguy, prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle region, said.
The plane banked to the left after it took off and crashed less than a minute later near houses, according to the flight tracking service Flightradar24.
The dead included five parachuting instructors, five clients and the pilot, according to L’Est Républicain, a local newspaper.
Police cordoned off the crumpled wreckage.
Flight tracking sites identified the plane as a single-engine Pilatus PC-6, a small transporter of freight, passengers and skydivers.
The parachutists were to have jumped as tandems, Nancy Mayor Mathieu Klein told public broadcaster France Info. Tandem jumps are skydiving experiences where two people, often an instructor and a first-time jumper, are attached together for the descent.
Klein said some of them had families and friends who had come to watch and saw the plane fall from the sky, causing “numerous” victims of psychological trauma.
Emergency services responded immediately and were providing psychological support to several relatives of the victims, Séguy said, adding that authorities were also collecting witness statements.
“We are deploying all available resources,” he said, including emergency medical teams, fire services, police and mental health support.
A resident, identified as John Curaku by BFM-TV, told the broadcaster that he was in his garden when he heard what sounded like a plane's engine stopping, immediately followed by a bang.
He said he went to the crash site and “there were no signs of life,” with two of the bodies thrown a few meters (yards) from the plane.
