Rafale fighter jet: Two pilots, instructor and student, confirmed dead after planes collide mid-air
Two French pilots have died after their Rafale fighter jets collided in mid-air.
One pilot ejected after the crash over northeastern France on Wednesday (14 August), but authorities had launched a desperate search for a missing instructor and a student pilot on the second jet. The two French pilots were found dead after the rare incident which occurred over Colombey-les-Belles, a town in northeastern France.
President Emmanuel Macron posted on X, formerly Twitter: “We learn with sadness the death of Capt Sebastien Mabire and Lt Matthis Laurens in an air accident in a Rafale training mission. The nation shares the grief of their families and brothers in arms at airbase 113 in Saint-Dizier”.
“One of the pilots was found safe and sound,” defence minister Sebastien Lecornu said earlier on X. It was not immediately clear what caused the collision.
“We heard a loud noise, around 12.30pm (10.30 GMT),” Patrice Bonneaux, deputy mayor of Colombey-les-Belles, told AFP. It was not the usual sonic boom of a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier, he said. “It was a strange noise, a percussive sound”.“I assumed that two planes had collided, but we didn’t believe it,” he said, adding that a road bordering a nearby forest had been cordoned off.
The Rafales aircraft can carry up to three people on board, and is divided by a two-seated area and a single-seater. Accidents involving Rafale jets are rare.
In December 2007, a Rafale jet crashed near Neuvic in southwestern France. Investigators concluded that the pilot had become disoriented. That was believed to be the first crash of a Rafale. In September 2009, two Rafale aircraft went down as they flew back to the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle off the coast of Perpignan after completing a test flight. One pilot died.