Two bodies were found on Wednesday August 16 in the marshy area where a tourist plane piloted by journalist Gérard Leclerc had crashed the day before in Lavau-sur-Loire (Loire-Atlantique), we learned from a close source. folder. The two bodies were recovered at midday, shortly after the search resumed, and are not yet identified, said this source, confirming information from Ouest-France.
According to the Saint-Nazaire prosecutor’s office, two to three people had taken place on board the small plane which had taken off from Loudun (Vienne) on Tuesday. The Loire-Atlantique prefecture initially spoke of three people. The aircraft, which belonged to the Loudun flying club, was piloted by 71-year-old Gérard Leclerc. Michèle Monory, daughter of the former minister and president of the Senate, René Monory, as well as a friend of the latter had taken place there, according to a source close to the file at Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Loire-Atlantique prefecture had initially mentioned the presence of three people on board the small plane, but the Saint-Nazaire public prosecutor’s office, in charge of the judicial investigation, estimated on Tuesday evening that the presence on board of a third person had yet to be confirmed. The search had resumed on Wednesday morning in an area of ??marsh lined with tall reeds in the Loire estuary, where debris from the plane had been found late Tuesday afternoon. Members of the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety, which conducts a technical investigation in parallel with the judicial investigations, were present on the spot, noted an AFP journalist.
No distress message
The Robin DR400 plane took off at 11:07 a.m. Tuesday from Loudun aerodrome (Vienne) bound for La Baule (Loire-Atlantique), where Gérard Leclerc was to attend a concert by his half-brother, Julien Clerc, on Thursday. according to relatives. At 11:37 a.m., the pilot of the plane had announced to the Nantes airport control tower that he was entering Saint-Nazaire airspace and then gave no other sign.
“He didn’t send any distress messages. Available flight data allows the flight path to be tracked until 11:42 a.m., when it disappeared from radar. It was then located near Lavau-sur-Loire, “continues the press release from the Saint-Nazaire prosecutor’s office. The alert was raised and the first aircraft debris was “spotted in the canals, including a wheel and a piece of registration.”
The search had been “made particularly difficult because the plane was submerged several meters in an area subject to very strong currents, and in which visibility for divers is almost zero”, explained the prosecution. In the early evening, the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety announced on X (formerly Twitter) the “fatal accident” of the Robin DR400, but no body had yet confirmed the death of the occupants of the aircraft.
