What exactly happened for such a tragedy to occur? Nothing has been leaked from the ongoing investigation, the day after the plane crash that occurred Sunday afternoon, near Collégien. It was by hitting a high-voltage line that the Cessna 172 ended up on the central reservation of the A4 motorway, near Collégien. An accident in which two men and a woman lost their lives. Namely the three people in the small tourist plane, which did not hit any vehicles on the ground.
The Meaux prosecutor’s office has ordered an autopsy of the pilot’s body, in order to determine whether he may have suffered a malaise that could explain the tragedy. The pilot, born in 1989, had held a pilot’s license since 2023 and had, a priori, just over 100 hours of flight time to his credit.
The bodies of the two passengers will also be autopsied. “This is to ensure that there was no carbon dioxide poisoning,” said Jean-Baptiste Bladier, the prosecutor of Meaux, who has entrusted the investigation – opened for involuntary manslaughter – to the Air Transport Gendarmerie. As for the plane, it will be examined to try to understand if it was a breakdown.
Around fifty firefighters mobilized
It is 3:38 pm on Sunday when the Seine-et-Marne Departmental Fire and Rescue Service receives a call from a witness, telling them that a plane has just crashed in the middle of the A4 motorway, near the Bay 2 shopping centre. Immediately, the firefighters activate significant rescue resources. Around fifty firefighters will converge from thirteen fire stations in Seine-et-Marne: Lognes, Chessy, Moissy-Cramayel, Dammartin-en-Goële, Meaux, Faremoutiers… The last will leave the scene around 11 pm.
And some 21 devices were to be activated by the SDIS 77: rescue and victim assistance vehicles, extrication devices, a high-powered foam van, hydraulic equipment, etc. The firefighters knew that a torn-off wing was on fire. A helicopter also landed on the motorway, which was closed in both directions by the police officers of the CRS motorway East Île-de-France. But it quickly left, the three victims having died.
