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Six killed as private plane crashes in central France

AFP/The Local
AFP/The Local - [email protected]
Six killed as private plane crashes in central France
A small plane crashed in the French countryside on Tuesday, killing six people. Photo: Chris Happel

A private plane crashed in the French countryside on Tuesday killing six people on board, aviation officials said. The aircraft was on its way to Paris from the tourist town of Annecy in the French Alps.

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A small plane crashed Tuesday in France's central Burgundy region while flying in bad weather, killing six people, officials said.

The crash occurred a little after 11:00 am (1000 GMT) in a field near the village of Mouffy, firefighters said.

The victims were all French.

The single-engine TBM-700 plane was registered in the United States, according to RTL radio, and was flying between Annecy, a tourist destination in the French Alps, and Toussus-le-Noble, a small airport in Paris's western
suburbs.

"There was heavy fog" at the time of the crash, Mouffy's mayor Jean Desnoyers said, but added that the accident could be due to a technical problem.

He said several witnesses reported that the plane sounded like it was having engine trouble, one describing "a strange whistling noise".

The plane broke into pieces when it hit the field, scattering debris over a radius of 300 metres (1,000 feet). The bodies have not yet been recovered.

France has witnessed a number of crashes involving small planes this year including one near Lyon in September when a Cessna aircraft came down shortly after taking off from an airfield near Lyon. The plane burst into flames as it crashed into a field near the runway, killing all four on board.

And at the beginning of September, two British residents were killed when the plane they were travelling in, also a Cessna, crashed off the coast of Jersey, in the English Channel, after taking off from Dinan in western France.

In August, The Local reported how an elderly brother and sister were among three people killed when a tourist plane crashed into a field in Puy-de-Dome in central France.

Just a week earlier, two men were killed instantly when the Cirrus SR20 single-engine aircraft they were travelling in crashed in the Loire region of central France.

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