1968 Sainte-Marie Douglas DC-6 crash

1968 Sainte-Marie Douglas DC-6 crash
Post-takeoff crash.
A Douglas DC-6
Date	9 March 1968 (1968-03-09)
Site	Sainte-Marie, Réunion, France
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas DC-6
Flight origin	Gillot Airport
Fatalities	16
Survivors	1 (a Flight nurse)

The 1968 Sainte-Marie Douglas DC-6 crash was an aviation accident that occurred on the island of La Réunion, a French overseas department in the southwestern Indian Ocean, on the evening of 9. A military Douglas DC-6 aircraft taking off from Gillot Airport at 23h 15' crashed two minutes later in the commune of Sainte-Marie, Réunion, resulting in the deaths of sixteen people, including French General Charles Ailleret [fr]. This aviation accident remains the deadliest in the history of La Réunion.

Aircraft

Disaster

Departing from Gillot at 23:00, the plane, which was originally scheduled to land in Djibouti at 11:40, crashed 55 seconds after takeoff.^[1]

The only survivor was General Ailleret's nurse, and the accident remains classified as defense secret and unsolved to this day: sabotage, alcohol, or suicide action.^[2]^[3]

In 1998, flight nurse Michèle Renard testified about this incident.^[4]

A commemoration of this accident took place in March 2018.^[5]

Notes and references

^ "9 March 1968: Hell in the Heights of Sainte-Marie". Clicanoo.re. 4 March 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
^ "1968: DC-6 Crash, La Réunion's Worst Air Disaster". IPReunion.com. 9 March 2017. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
^ "53 ans jour pour jour : l'Accident aérien le plus important de l'histoire de la Réunion". Retrieved 29 September 2021.
^ "The Sole Survivor Tells Her Story". Clicanoo.re. 14 March 1998. Retrieved 29 September 2021.
^ "Commemoration of the DC6 Crash". defense.gouv.fr. 26 March 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2021.

v t e Aviation accidents and incidents in France
Before 1900	Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (June 1785) Sophie Blanchard (July 1819) Zénith (April 1875)
1900s	Patrie (November 1907) La République (September 1909)
1910s	Léon Delagrange (January 1910)
1920s	Picardie mid-air collision (April 1922) Air Union Farman Goliath crash (May 1923) KLM Fokker F.III Forêt de Mormal crash (June 1925) America (July 1927)
1930s	R101 (October 1930)
1940s	Sabena DC-3 Crash (December 1949)
1950s	Air India Flight 245 (November 1950) Tête de l'Obiou C-54 crash (November 1950) Air France SNCASE Languedoc crash (March 1952) Air France Flight 178 (September 1953) Hijacking of the FLN plane* (October 1956) Paris DC-6 crash (November 1956) TAI Flight 307 (September 1959)
1960s	Air France Flight 406* (May 1961) Derby Aviation crash (October 1961) Air France Flight 007 (June 1962) Air France Flight 117 (June 1962) Malév Flight 355 (November 1962) Air Inter Flight 2611 (August 1963) Air India Flight 101 (January 1966) Air Ferry DC-4 accident (June 1967) Air France Flight 212 (March 1968) Air France Flight 1611 (September 1968)
1970s	Pakistan International Airlines Flight 712 (December 1971) Air Inter Flight 696Y (October 1972) Nantes mid-air collision (March 1973) Paris Air Show Tu-144 crash (June 1973) Varig Flight 820 (July 1973) Pan Am Flight 816 (July 1973) Turkish Airlines Flight 981 (March 1974) TWA Flight 355 (September 1976)
1980s	Aer Lingus Flight 164 (May 1981) Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308 (December 1981) Air Littoral Flight 1919 (December 1987) TAT Flight 230 (March 1988) Air France Flight 296Q (June 1988)
1990s	Air Inter Flight 148 (January 1992) Trans-Air Service Flight 671 (March 1992) Lufthansa CityLine Flight 5634 (January 1993) Airbus Industrie Flight 129 (June 1994) Air France Flight 8969 (December 1994) Proteus Airlines Flight 706 (July 1998)
2000s	Air France Flight 4590 (July 2000) Air Caraïbes Flight 1501 (March 2001) Brit Air Flight 5672 (June 2003) Air Moorea Flight 1121 (August 2007) XL Airways Germany Flight 888T (November 2008)
2010s	Germanwings Flight 9525 (March 2015)
2020s	Touques Airbus AS350B helicopter crash (March 2021)
Includes overseas departments and overseas territories * occurred in French Algeria, now an independent country