Three pilots were involved in this collision over Meurthe-and-Moselle. Only one survived by ejecting from his aircraft.
As the hours passed, hope dwindled. Emmanuel Macron announced shortly before midnight on Wednesday, August 14, the death of the two pilots who were still being searched for south of the village of Colombey-les-Belles, near the border between the Vosges and Meurthe-et-Moselle. “We learn with sadness of the deaths of Captain Sébastien Mabire and Lieutenant Matthis Laurens, during a training mission accident in Rafale aircraft. The Nation shares the grief of their families and comrades-in-arms from Air Base 113 in Saint-Dizier,” the president wrote on X. The Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, expressed his “sincere condolences” to the families of the two pilots. “The entire Nation is grateful: we will never forget them.”
The two Rafale jets, a single-seater and a two-seater, belonging to the Rafale Transformation Squadron 3/4 “Aquitaine,” were returning from a refueling mission in Germany. For reasons still unknown, they collided around 12:30 PM, not far from Air Base 133 in Nancy-Ochey.
The pilot of the single-seater managed to eject and was found safe and sound. The search lasted all afternoon to locate the crash site and find the two other pilots, a trainer and a newly licensed young pilot. The investigation will aim to understand how the two aircraft collided and whether the ejection seats in the two-seater Rafale functioned or not. The prefecture of Meurthe-et-Moselle has launched a witness appeal hotline. Fighter jet accidents are rare in France. The last one occurred in 2019 when a pilot and a navigator were killed in the crash of their Mirage 2000D in the Jura.
