Her voice is still exalted by what she has just experienced. The Minister Delegate for Local Authorities, Caroline Cayeux, was in the ERJ 145 plane from the company Fly Amelia, which arrived from Rodez, and came off the runway at Orly airport shortly after 7:30 p.m. on Thursday.
If there were no injuries among the 39 passengers and three crew members on board, the minister and former mayor of Beauvais (Oise) wanted to greet the rescue teams and pilots. “We still experienced a big moment of emotion”, blows to the Parisian the one who returned from the 38th congress of the national association of elected officials from the mountains (ANEM) which was held in Pont-de-Salars, in Aveyron. .
While the landing originally scheduled for 6:30 p.m. was delayed, the minister and the other passengers were warned that a very localized storm was hitting their destination. “We felt that we were entering a zone of turbulence,” she continues. A final landing which promises to be complicated by the weather conditions.
“There is a big storm that I cannot avoid, we will have to land now, announces the captain. He warned that it might be sporty, ”recalls Caroline Cayeux. Finally, the small commercial device manages to put its wheels on the ground without any particular pitfalls. “I thought we were out of business, that it was not so difficult, smiles the minister. I even told my neighbour, my chief of staff, a pilot in his spare time”.
The plane glides over “300 or 400 m”
Except that very quickly, the member of the government and her 38 other flight companions, will understand that something is not quite right. “We quickly realized that we couldn’t stop. The plane did not slow down and made zigzags like aquaplaning for a car, ”tends the minister. He said he then felt like a shock before the plane slipped “300 or 400 m in the tall grass, off the runway, before stopping”.
The hostess then quickly went around the participants in the flight, “all attached” assures Caroline Cayeux, to ensure that there were no injuries. After a long procedure to prevent any risk of kerosene leakage or fire, everyone was able to be evacuated. “I don’t know if we should have waited longer before landing,” wondered the minister, Thursday evening, when she had been able to reach her home.
On Twitter, however, she wanted to post a message to reassure “a large number of people who were able to write to us”, she explains. “Rodez return track exit: more fear than harm,” she wrote on her Twitter account. Fortunately, no injuries were reported. (…) A huge thank you to the firefighters and the teams at Orly airport for their professionalism”.
Following this incident, one of the runways at Orly was closed and diversions to Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport are possible. The Bureau of Investigations and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety should go on site to make the first observations.