A nice scare… The Stade Français rugby players scared themselves last weekend when they went to Toulouse for their Top 14 match. And that has nothing to do with their defeat (49-18) and the loss of their leadership chair for the benefit of their winner of the day.
24 hours before this match, when arriving in the Pink City, Saturday May 11, their plane, chartered by HOP, a subsidiary of Air France, was the victim of an incident which led to the triggering of a dismantling procedure. emergency at Toulouse-Blagnac airport.
An investigation was opened by the BEA (Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety), after an anomaly on the landing gear position indicator, which triggered a distress message and a landing with the alarm, according to the BEA’s X account (ex-Twitter).
“We were scared, we even warned our loved ones,” says one of the players on board. We weren’t being smart. » Another passenger recounts in detail the scenario of this disturbing landing. “We were about to land when we heard a loud noise several times. The plane went around again and circled two or three times over the airport. We wondered what was going on. The captain explained it afterwards: when triggering the landing gears, three lights should turn green. But one remained red.”
What Air France confirms in a press release: “the crew of flight AF4190 (…) linking Paris-Charles de Gaulle to Toulouse-Blagnac requested priority upon landing at Toulouse-Blagnac after suspecting a problem with the landing gear. ‘landing’.
Curled up, arms over your head, and… “impact!” »
The company specifies with La Dépêche du Midi that, shortly before landing, the pilots lowered the aircraft’s landing gear but the left main landing gear did not lock. The pilots therefore carried out a low altitude pass in front of the control tower so that the controllers could visually verify that all the trains, and in particular the left, were extended.
“We did laps, at one point we flew over the stadium. I said to myself: they want to show us Ernest-Wallon before the match,” smiles a player. “Then we were finally told we were going to land. The crew came to explain to us what to do. We had to curl up in a ball with our arms on our heads… Before landing, we heard: impact! »
This familiar term for rugby players had a strange resonance that day. Fortunately, the landing went well, although the plane seemed a little wobbly, probably due to the problem with one of the landing gears. “The crew delivered,” says a club member. The captain was experienced, he was in control.”
Firefighters everywhere
Once on the ground, safe and sound, everything is not over. “The plane, after a few meters, could no longer move forward,” continues this passenger. He seemed stuck. We couldn’t go down afterwards, we had to wait, I would say an hour, for the inspections to take place. Then we couldn’t go down through the main doors, they were on the side of the defective landing gear. We had to go down through a small door, then be picked up by bus on the tarmac. There were police, firefighters everywhere.”
Some then understand that it could have been more serious. “We were told afterwards that the concern was that the faulty landing gear would catch fire. And as it was not far from an engine…”. More fear than harm, in the end, for the players and staff of Stade Français. “We were shaken, fortunately we only played the next day and not the same day,” whispers one of them.
