An Armée de l’Air Française (French Air Force) Mirage 2000D has gone down in the Alpine region of the western Joura mountains near the River Doubs.
The French Mirage was proceeding to a routine training exercice at low altitude with instruments, not armed. The jet fighter was missing. Search operations were conducted.
Debris of the jet plane was spotted. According to the local firefighters, the debris of the plane covers the ground on several hundred square meters at the crash site. But still no trace of the two occupants. the National Gendarmerie has deployed more than a hundred soldiers on site. Both Pilot are presumed dead
The missing fighter jet belongs to the 3rd Fighter Wing of an air base in Nancy-Ochey. The crew included a man and a woman, according to some media reports.
According to French language media reports that were auto-translated from the L’Est Républicain news website:
“A Mirage 2000D fighter plane that took off from Nancy-Ochey airbase in Meurthe-et-Moselle disappeared from radar screens shortly after 11am in the Mignovillard sector, on the border between the Doubs and the Jura.
In the afternoon, first debris but also a parachute and a map were found on the heights of the village, at 1,050 meters altitude. The two soldiers who piloted the aircraft, a man and a woman, are currently untraceable.”
None of the beacons have been heard at the time or since the crash despite the deployment of radio amateurs and specialized services: neither the seats, nor the individual survival radios of the pilot and the navigator seem to have been triggered.
A French Air Force Mirage 2000D fighter jet is missing after going off the radar on Wednesday morning. Debris has been found and searches efforts to find the missing crew is ongoing.
The jet, which had a pilot and a weapons officer on board, went missing at about 11:00am local time while conducting a sortie in the east of the country near the border with Switzerland.
The French Air Force confirmed losing contact with the jet on Wednesday afternoon, adding that rescue crews were dispatched “immediately” to locate the plane.
Two search helicopters were deployed in response, but the area is currently affected by bad weather, with low-hanging clouds obstructing the view, French media reported. More than 100 gendarmes have been deployed to aid in the search, the National Gendarmerie confirmed.
The two-man, single-engine, delta-wing Mirage 2000D is a ground attack aircraft first flown in 1986. The original Mirage 2000 variant first flew in 1978.
