Eleven days after the crash of German entrepreneur Rainer Schaller’s private plane, Costa Rica finally stopped the search operation. So far, only the bodies of a man and a child have been found. Meanwhile, the family of one of the fatalities arrives at the scene of the accident.
A good week and a half after the crash of a small plane with the German entrepreneur Rainer Schaller on board, the authorities in Costa Rica have finally ended the search for missing persons. After “eleven days of continuous work,” the institutions involved had stopped the search because “no further evidence was found,” Costa Rica Deputy Minister of Public Safety Martín Arias said in a video intended for the press.
Public Safety Minister Jorge Torres said authorities received the family of one of the victims on Tuesday and escorted them to the suspected crash site. According to the Costa Rican authorities, the private plane, which had taken off from southern Mexico, crashed on October 21 on its way to the airport in the province of Limón after losing contact with it.
Search crews later discovered the bodies of an adult and a child, whose identities have not yet been released, in the sea near the crash site. After the crash, the authorities in the Central American country confirmed that 53-year-old Schaller, founder of the McFit gym chain, and relatives were on board the machine that crashed on Friday. Accordingly, in addition to Schaller and his 44-year-old partner, another 40-year-old German and two children and the 66-year-old pilot, a Swiss, were on board.
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 2010 Loveparade disaster in Duisburg, 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.