It must have been a dream moment, an exceptional excursion in breathtaking scenery. Two French people were killed in the crash of a tourist plane flying over Lake Powell, in the west of the United States, this Saturday. The local press had reported the existence of this accident on Monday, without knowing the origin or the identity of the victims.
According to our information, six passengers had climbed into this small device for a flight above the second largest water reservoir in the United States, a huge artificial site of nearly 300 km straddling Arizona and Utah : two French couples, one of whom is accompanied by his two teenage daughters.
A sightseeing tour through the American West
It appears that the plane, a Cessna 207A, struck the surface of the water following a technical problem. The two women, the minors and the pilot managed to get out of the rubble, injured, before being picked up by a tourist boat. But the two men would have sunk with the carcass. They would still be missing.
The flight was offered as an option on the spot to around fifty participants in a 15-day tourist circuit across the American West, from Los Angeles to San Francisco via Las Vegas. “In shock” and “deeply saddened”, the TUI France agency, which organized the journey via its subsidiary Nouvelles Frontières, indicates that it has put in place “psychological support” for its customers and their families, to whom it provides “everything his support”. The survivors will be repatriated as soon as the American authorities have given the green light, she said. The Quai d’Orsay, for its part, was not able to communicate immediately.