Pilot facing charges after daredevil skydiver was decapitated in mid-air collision
Topics: Travel, World News, News
Jess Battison
Featured Image Credit: Visual China Group via Getty Images / LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Travel, World News, News
A pilot is facing charges after a daredevil skydiver was decapitated as he jumped out of a plane.
Parachutist Nicolas Galy was instantly killed in a mid-air collision in France back in July 2018.
The 40-year-old had leapt out of the plane at 14,000ft just 20 seconds before the tragedy occurred.
An experienced skydiver, he had jumped along with another skydiver from the aircraft in his wingsuit – a jumpsuit but with webbed sleeves, like wings.
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But as he began gliding after the free dive, the plane descended and Galy collided with the left wing and his head was sliced off.
And in the total, gory, tragedy, his emergency parachute then opened, sending the rest of his body to the ground separately.
The pilot of the plane, named only as Alain C, worked for a parachuting school. The 64-year-old was flying the aircraft over Bouloc-en-Quercy near Toulouse when Galy jumped out for his dive.
Now, he is facing manslaughter charges and describes the whole nightmare as the ‘tragedy of my life’.
The Times reports that he insisted to a Montauban court that he had done nothing wrong, and Galy was gliding in a direction different to what had been planned.
The skydiver had 226 jumps under his belt but the pilot says he ‘did not follow the expected course and should never have been’ on it.
Alain C explained: “He was parallel to the plane and I thought he was further north.
“It wasn’t my responsibility. I think my flight path made sense. This has been the tragedy of my life but I am not at fault."
He did admit that although he couldn’t see Galy and assumed he was clear of the plane, wingsuiters ‘don’t descend much and can be conflict with the aircraft’.
The court learned that Alain C.’s lisencse was actually invalid at the time of the fatal flight.
Prosecutor Jeanne Regagnon asked for the pilot to be given a 12-month suspended prison term, as well as a €10,026 ($8,699) fine.
Regagnon added that Galy was ‘the only one who obeyed the rules without negligence’.
Alain C also said he had not briefed the skydivers and parachutists, and an inquiry by air accident investigators blamed the tragedy on this briefing failure as well as his immediate steep descent after losing sight of the pair and inadequate official procedures.
The verdict of this case is set to be announced in November.