The search for the crashed private jet with the Schaller family on board continues off the coast of Costa Rica – the weather conditions are better than in the days before. The emergency services not only take into account the ocean currents, but also work together with neighboring Panama.
After the crash of German entrepreneur Rainer Schaller’s private plane off the coast of Costa Rica, the emergency services have expanded their search. In consultation with the authorities of the neighboring country, an aerial search was also carried out in Panamanian waters for wreckage, said the director of the Costa Rican coast guard, Martín Arias. Initially, however, no further debris was found there either. The search operation with around 60 emergency services will continue as long as necessary.
There were a total of six people on board the machine at the time of the accident on Friday evening: McFit founder Schaller, his partner, the two children, another German and the Swiss pilot. The bodies of a man and a child, as well as debris and luggage, were found in the sea over the weekend. Sea currents would also be taken into account in the search, said Public Safety Minister Jorge Torres. The weather conditions were better for the search teams on Monday than in the previous days.
Rainer Schaller was born in Bamberg, Bavaria, in 1969 and founded his first fitness studio in Würzburg in 1997. He relied on the discount principle in the fitness sector and created a huge studio chain with McFit. RSG Group also includes other fitness brands such as John Reed, Gold’s Gym and Cyberobics. But Schaller is also active in other areas: the group also includes model agencies and the artist management company Tigerpool, for example.
Schaller also hit the headlines as the rights holder in connection with the Loveparade disaster in Duisburg in 2010, with 21 dead and more than 650 injured. As the head of the organizer company at the time, he was never investigated. In the subsequent criminal proceedings against employees of the city of Duisburg and his company Lopavent, he appeared as a witness. In 2020, the proceedings were discontinued without a verdict – due to presumably insufficient guilt. In court in the spring of 2018, Schaller expressed his condolences to the victims’ relatives.