Tragedy struck as three people were killed in a motorway plane crash east of Paris on Sunday.
A light aircraft was reported to have come down on the A4 motorway in Nosiel around 4pm after the plane hit an electric power cable, according to a police source.
The motorway was blocked in both directions, the source confirmed, asking not to be named. No vehicles were hit.
Images from the scene showed officials in hi-vis jackets attending to the scene of an unturned plane straddling the central reservation.
Meaux prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier told the Afp news agency the victims were ‘two men and a woman’, adding the pilot had only held a pilot’s licence since last year.
Footage from the scene showed cars being moved away from the crash site on the other side of the road as an ambulance arrived.
Smoke appeared to billow from a part of the plane stranded in the road, with officials on hand to guide the traffic.
The Meaux prosecutor’s office identified the plane as a Cesna 172, as reported by Le Figaro.
It was said to have taken off from the Lognes-Emerainville airfield around half an hour before the tragedy.
The plane is believed to have ‘struck a high voltage line’ before crashing down into the road.
Jean-Baptiste Bladier told local media the pilot had been born in 1989 and had little over 100 hours of flight time to his name at the time of the crash.
The Meaux prosecutor’s office has since ordered an investigation into involuntary manslaughter, led by the air transport gendarmerie, according to Le Figaro.
The Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) has also opened an ‘administrative investigation’, according to Le Parisien.
‘A tourist plane from Lognes-Emerainville (aéroflight flying club) has crashed for the second time in a year on the A4 near Collégien,’ the Association of residents of the Lognes aerodrome said in a statement.
The residents’ association has been critical of the risk of planes flying over an urban area in the past.
The horror followed a similar incident last July in which a small tourist plane missed its landing at Lognes-Emerainville airstrip and hit the barrier on the A4.
All three onboard escaped alive, with only the pilot sustaining minor injuries.
(Mail Online)
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