Authorities on Sunday released the name of a pilot who died during a parachute flight after her passengers jumped from the plane near Niagara Falls.
Melanie Georger, 26, was the only person on board when the single-engine Cessna crashed Saturday, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Georger, of Towanda, New York, was working toward becoming a commercial pilot, her father said in a statement on Facebook Saturday.
“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, about to fulfill her dream of flying for an airline. She was doing what she loved, flying for a local skydiving company, when her plane crashed.”
The skydiving company, identified by the sheriff’s office as Skydive the Falls, declined to comment. The company advertises a scenic flight over Niagara Falls before every skydive.
One of the skydivers who was on the flight with Georger just before the one that crashed said he felt blessed to be alive and lamented that his life had been cut short.
“For some reason, God left me on this earth and I’m blessed to still be here,” Walker told CBS affiliate WIVB-TV. “It’s a strange feeling to be on that plane a half-hour before it went down. Why didn’t it go down with us on it? Why didn’t it go down with more people on it? It’s surreal.”
He said he was not concerned about the pilot’s youth and that she had reached out to him personally and shared words of encouragement about his tandem skydiving partner, boosting his confidence before he jumped.
“I commend her for wanting to do what she did,” he said. “I feel really bad for the company and the company she worked for, because it’s a great company. I think she did a great job training them.”
Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti said if the plane had crashed just a few hundred yards from where it went down, it could have been much worse, WIVB-TV reported.
“The place where he landed is right next to the boardwalk. We’re looking west, near Fort Niagara, there’s a lot of football players out there today,” Filicetti said. “We’re lucky where he landed, but it’s an unfortunate incident.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement that the plane was a single-engine Cessna 208B. It crashed near a road in Youngstown, less than 15 miles from Niagara Falls. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will investigate the crash.
According to a Facebook post from Eagle East Aviation, Georger obtained his private pilot certificate in July 2021.
