Five people are killed in mid-air crash involving two tourist planes in France
- Five people have died after a tourist plane and aircraft collided mid-air in France
- The airplanes crashed at around 4:30pm local time in Loches in Indre-et-Loire
- The ULM plane ‘landed on the fence around a house’, the local government said
- Police in Loches have taken over the investigation into the fatal collision
Five people have died after a tourist plane and a microlight aircraft collided mid-air in western France on Saturday afternoon.
The small microlight aircraft was carrying two people and collided with a DA40 tourist plane, which was carrying three people onboard.
The collision occurred at around 4:30pm local time in Loches, Indre-et-Loire department, local government official Nadia Seghier said.
Five people have died after a small microlight aircraft was carrying two people and collided with a DA40 tourist plane, which had three people onboard
The collision took place at around 4:30pm local time in Loches (above), in the Indre-et-Loire department of western France
The secretary general added that the microlight, or ULM plane, ‘landed on the fence around a house’ but nobody else on the ground was injured.
All five passengers onboard the two planes involved have died.
Seghier added: ‘(The microlight) landed on the fence around a house without harming anyone else, (the DA40) several hundred metres away in an uninhabited area.
‘All five people involved died.’
The collision reportedly took place in the air on the Châteauroux side of the small city.
The tourist plane had taken off from Poitiers, situated around 100km from Loches, according to the Mirror.
But the flightpath of the microlight remains unknown at this time.
The microlight, or ULM plane, reportedly ‘landed on the fence around a house’ in Loches but nobody else on the ground was injured
Police in Loches have taken over the investigation into the crash. Above, Diamond DA40 3 seat single propeller – the same type of aircraft which collided with the ULM plane in Loches
Around 50 firefighters were called out while 30 gendarmes, paramilitary police officers, set up road detours around the crash sites.
‘Air emergency staff from Lyon were brought in at first to track down the plane, which was quickly found,’ the prefecture said.
No details about the identities of the victims or the causes of the collision have been released so far.
Police in Loches have taken over the investigation into the crash.