Five Nurses Among 11 Killed in France Skydiving Plane Crash

On Sunday morning, June 28, 2026, a small plane took off from an airfield in northeastern France carrying ten passengers and a pilot. Less than a minute later, it was a pile of wreckage near a bike path. Everyone on board died. Among the dead were five nurses who had signed up for a first-time skydive, five instructors, and the man flying the plane. It happened so fast that families standing nearby, ready to cheer, watched the whole thing fall out of the sky.

The flight lasted less than a minute

The plane lifted off from the Nancy-Essey airfield, on the edge of the city of Nancy, at around 11 a.m. local time. According to flight tracking data, it climbed, drifted left, then dropped almost straight down. Yves Seguy, the top official for the Meurthe-et-Moselle region, told reporters the aircraft suffered a malfunction and "fell almost vertically." It hit a grassy strip roughly 300 meters from the runway, close to homes and two roads. You can read the early on-the-ground account from officials at the scene, who said the crash came seconds after takeoff.

The five students were nurses on a day off

This part stuck with a lot of people. The five first-time jumpers were independent nurses who had booked the trip together, basically a group of coworkers blowing off steam. Thierry Pechey, head of the area's nursing council, said they "had decided to go on a first skydiving jump, no doubt to unwind, as we're going through a difficult time with the heatwave." They were set to do tandem jumps, where a beginner is strapped to an instructor for the fall. The detail about the nurses on board came from a source close to the case.

Their families were there to watch

Here is the gut punch. The people on the ground were not strangers. They were the jumpers' friends and relatives, standing near the airfield with their phones out, ready to film the tandem dives. Nancy Mayor Mathieu Klein said the victims "died in full view of their loved ones." Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described "tremendous emotion and an even greater psychological trauma." Medical and mental health teams were sent to care for the relatives who saw it. Klein also noted the plane came down just a few meters from houses and said, as reported by crews at the site, "it's tragic, but it could have been even worse."

The plane was a 1991 Pilatus PC-6

The aircraft was a single-engine Pilatus PC-6/B2-H4 Turbo Porter, registered D-FIPS and built back in 1991. It was registered in Germany and, by most accounts, was operating a parachuting flight for a local skydiving school. The Pilatus PC-6 is a workhorse for skydiving outfits around the world because it climbs fast, carries a load of jumpers, and can use short runways. This exact plane also had a past hiccup: in 2012, under a different operator, it hit an obstacle on the ground while taxiing after landing. More on the plane's history and registration has been pulled together since the crash.

Witnesses said the engine just stopped

People nearby gave pretty consistent stories. One resident, identified as John Curaku, said he was in his yard when he heard what sounded like the engine cutting out, followed right away by a bang. A driver who saw it told Reuters the plane was climbing and then suddenly veered right. "Something was clearly wrong," he said. By the time he circled back and parked near a fire truck, a man was already trying to put out flames. He said it was obvious no one survived the impact. You can read more from the people who heard it happen.

There may not be a black box

Investigators have a tough job ahead, and one reason is plain: black boxes are not required on this model of Pilatus. With no flight recorder, the team will lean on examining the engine, the controls, and witness accounts. France's BEA, its civil aviation safety bureau, is helping, and a gendarmerie air transport unit started picking through the wreckage. Engine trouble is one early line of thinking, though nothing has been confirmed. Pierre-Yves Eugene, head of the national parachutists' union, called the Pilatus "a very demanding machine" that needs an inspection every two years. A former BEA chief even raised passenger seating as a factor. The point about the missing recorder matters a lot here.

It came down feet from homes and a shopping center

As awful as this was, the location kept it from being even more deadly. The plane hit a grassy area and a bike path in a residential part of Tomblaine, narrowly missing nearby houses and a shopping center. Tomblaine Mayor Herve Feron confirmed no homes were struck and no one on the ground was hurt. Seguy put it bluntly: "Had it occurred just a few dozen meters away, the accident could have caused collateral casualties." Police told everyone to stay away from the airport so emergency crews could work. The technical investigation opened almost immediately.

The deadliest French crash of its kind in decades

Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot, who went to the scene, called it a "terrible tragedy" with a "particularly heavy" toll. He said it was France's worst aviation accident involving skydiving in about 30 years. Other officials described it as the country's deadliest general aviation accident on record. Both Tabarot and Interior Minister Nunez traveled to Tomblaine on Sunday afternoon to speak with reporters and meet with the responders. The Paris prosecutor's office is leading the probe. The minister's reaction and the scale of the loss were covered by reporters on the ground.

It happened two weeks after a Missouri crash

If this story feels eerily familiar, there's a reason. Just two weeks earlier, on June 14, a skydiving plane crashed moments after takeoff in Butler, Missouri, killing 12 people: the pilot and 11 skydivers. Two crashes that close together, both involving small planes packed with jumpers, have put a fresh spotlight on how these aircraft are run and checked. The connection between the two incidents was noted by several outlets reporting on the France crash.

What happens now

For now, the cause is still unknown. Officials have refused to guess, saying only that the plane dropped out of the sky suddenly after a normal-looking takeoff. Investigators are collecting witness statements and tearing into the engine and flight controls, working without the help of a recorder. The bigger story is the people who didn't come home: five nurses on a day meant for fun, five instructors who did this for a living, and a pilot, all of them gone in under a minute while their families watched from the grass. Details from the crash site​ are still coming in as the investigation moves forward.