The Mont-de-Marsan public prosecutor announced on Wednesday afternoon that the body of the student pilot who jumped from a tourist plane into the ocean on Tuesday had been found by the emergency services. The body of the victim, a 32-year-old man from La Rochelle, was discovered on a beach between
Biscarrosse and Mimizan. The co-pilot had managed to land the aircraft in an emergency on the beach of the Landes missile test center.
According to the first elements of the investigation, in the light in particular of the testimony of the instructor, “the flight was suddenly interrupted by a kind of delusional crisis” of the student pilot, who made “inconsistent remarks” and “Would have shown his will to commit suicide and to throw the plane into the sea”, explained the prosecutor.
He jumped about fifty meters above sea level
While the plane flew over the Arcachon basin, the student pilot made a U-turn in an “authoritarian” manner. The instructor then took control of the aircraft again and decided to make an emergency landing. Despite the pilot’s attempts to “calm” the situation, the student “indicated that he would jump out of the plane in midair”.
The young man “opened the cockpit and jumped into the water, at an altitude of about fifty meters. The impact on the sea must have been particularly violent, ”explained the prosecutor. The instructor then landed in an emergency on the beach of Biscarosse, unharmed, but “in a state of shock”.
The investigation opened for “research of the causes of death” is entrusted to the brigade of gendarmerie of air transport of Biarritz. The investigators will in particular use the recordings of the conversations on board the cockpit.