French fighter jets makes emergency landing in Sydney Nova Scotia

A French Air Force pilot was close to bailing out of his fighter jet after its controls failed over Sydney causing 4 French air force Mirage fighter jets to land at the Sydney Airport Wednesday morning when one of the jets experienced hydraulic problems.

The 4 jets had been in Alaska on a 2 week training exercise. The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy were involved in the exercise as well. They were heading back home when one of the pilots experienced problems with his jet. This forced the 4 Mirage fighter jets to land at the Sydney Nova Scotia airport. The controls of the plane failed and caused hydraulic problems. No one was hurt. All planes landed safely. The pilot, Capt. Damien Gadiou, said “Fortunately we still had part of the controls,” “It is not that easy to leave an aircraft. We had to be prepared for the possibility.”“If the failure had been one or two hours later, we would have been over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It would have been very bad location for us.” The Sydney airport received the call about 9:55 am saying they had an emergency with one of the planes and they were about 10 minutes from the airport. The plane had just refueled in Bangor, Maine and as a safety precaution, the fuel had to be dumped. The three other jets landed with him and the French military Boeing 707 and a C-130 Hercules that were with them had to land in Stephenville, Newfoundland because they could not land in Sydney. Capt. Julien Fourneret, a pilot of one of the other fighter jets was flying beside him in formation and said

“I tried to help as best as possible. My job was to fly close to him, to talk to the radio controller, to tell him the problems, enabling the pilot in trouble to concentrate on following emergency procedures and controlling his jet.”

Gadiou said he feels lucky to be alive. He was close to bailing out of his jet. They do not know how long they will be there. It will depend on the crews working on the jets. My parents live in Sydney and said they seen the plane flying overhead. They were talking to me on the phone at the time. My dad said it looked like the plane was going to crash. You could tell they were having problems keeping it controlled. So I am glad that they managed to get the jet landed safely. It could have been a lot worse.