A 26-year-old pilot who dreamed of flying for commercial airlines was killed in a crash near Niagara Falls over the weekend just 30 minutes after the skydivers she was carrying had jumped from the aircraft and she was headed back.
Melanie Georger was alone in the single-engine Cessna she was piloting when she went down in a nearby highway, the Niagara County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating to determine the cause of the crash.
Georger, of Towanda, New York, was "on the cusp" of becoming a commercial airline pilot, her father said in a statement on Facebook after the crash Saturday.
"Friends and family, my life as I know it ended today. My beloved daughter, my best friend and one of the two lights of my life passed away suddenly today," wrote Paul Georger. "Melanie was a pilot, on the cusp of realizing her dream to fly for the airlines."
She was "doing what she loved, flying for a local skydiving company when her plane crashed," he added.
One of the skydivers called escaping death while Georger did not "surreal."
"Why didn't it happen when I was up there? Why didn't it happen when we were all on the plane?" first-time jumper Jeffrey Walker wondered in an interview with the Associated Press.
🇺🇸PILOT DIES AFTER SKYDIVERS JUMP
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 22, 2024
Melanie Georger, a 26-year-old pilot from New York, died in a plane crash shortly after releasing a group of skydivers.
Witnesses and audio recordings revealed she remained composed, with her final radio message containing heartfelt words.… pic.twitter.com/z5rrRdUU0x
He told CBS affiliate WIVB: "For some reason, God left me on Earth and I'm just blessed to still be around. It's just an eerie feeling that I was on that plane literally a half-hour before it crashed."
He said Georger encouraged him before his jump, giving him confidence.
"I give her props for wanting to do what she was doing," he said.
Her father wrote: "My life is much darker today and will remain so for a long time. To my tweety pie, my girlie, my beloved and my heart, I'm already looking forward to the day that we reunite and I will have a huge hole in my heart and a never-ending ache until then."
