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In Doussard there is a landing field used by many paragliders, usually after they’ve taken off from the nearby Col de la Forclaz.
Do we know, is this where LMC claimed he landed, after his gliding event?
Apart from Col de la Forglaz (In Switzerland?) being quite a distance from Doussard (Are you thinking a powered paraglider?) I don’t think he could carry the motor and the parachute up the mountain and also on a motorcycle? I always assumed it was an un-powered one, which is basically a glorified parachute.
Anyway, apart from that do you think paragliders “land” at airfields. That was not not my assumption or indeed experience, limited though it is.
i) They don’t need an airfield, they barely need a field to land.
II) Paragliders could interfere with regular flight operations. They fly at low altitudes, often below the radar, which could lead to collisions if not properly coordinated. The presence of paragliders could disrupt the normal flow of aircraft, especially during takeoff and landing phases where visibility and predictability are crucial
III) They would need to be in radio contact with an airfield, for them to coordinate /permit them to land
In short I do not think paragliders are compatible with air fields and anyway not at all necessary.
Quote
“Despite not using an engine, paraglider flights can last many hours and cover many hundreds of kilometres, though flights of one to five hours and covering some tens of kilometres are more the norm.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragliding
intp1
I had not known, that, that take off place, was in Switzerland.
Probably more local flights, also land in Doussard.
I have never been Paragliding or hangliding.
However, I was in the Air Training Corps in the sixties and became a glider pilot.
No roof, no engine, no communication system and no parachute, yet they let schoolchildren take part?
I bet it would not happen, these days.
I have not been gliding, since then, so know next to nothing.
I would like to do it again
I expect it would be quite expensive, these days.
In the ATC it was all free, they were hoping you would join the RAF, like W.B.M.
Yes so a paraglider does not have the wing span like a glider. Imagine getting towed to around 5000 ft in a glider, you would immediately be concerned where you might land? Unless you have serious thermals.
Well then imagine you are falling from that kind of alt. in a large parachute (paraglider)? You would like to know where you might land before you jumped off the side of the mountain. Really anywhere without trees or shear rocks would do.
Sure in perfect conditions from maximum altitude with thermals to hop you could put together a long, record glide down but then put that paraglider into the situation you are thinking about.
Little choice of take-off point or timing, or weather conditions, stress, need for covert landing and extraction. A player in such an enterprise is not going to land at an air field where that would be probably documented. Getting across the border could be useful?
If there was a convenient take off point nearby, the point would be to get out without using the road, land soon and near a discrete extraction option?
IMHO
Now what just came into my head? The Motorcycle which was seen cross country going where there was no easy access or exit? Travelling to a jump off point? No need for riding out. Could glide down to access to a vehicle. Just a thought. That would leave an abandoned MC but Keystone Clouseau probably didnt check.
Happy New Year!
@michael norton & intp1
My recollection is that LMC actually won (possibly in a customer lottery) a ‘first flight’ introductory lesson in hang gliding (in french ‘deltaplane’). He already had decent paragliding experience.
Many years ago I found out that the hang gliding lessons were run by ‘the Flyeo shop’ (I can’t remember whether that is the correct spelling). Anyway, they had premises in Doussard, so not co-located with the paragliding landing area. Their website noted clearly that hang gliding lessons started and ended at their premises in Doussard. Hope that helps.
Happy New Year!
P.S. There is another designated ‘landing field’ in the area very near Sythenex.
Very Local
@michael norton
From your estimate of walk-in time it seems clear that, unless there was ‘inside information’ acquired by a walk-in killer, he could not be specifically targeting anybody killed that day.
However a walk-in theory would work well for a ‘local lunatic’ scenario but they would implicitly be very local.
Here is Flyeo in Bing Maps
https://www.bing.com/maps?cp=45.777891%7E6.225231&lvl=16.9&style=h
Clicking on the icon brings up no result, so they may no longer be trading.
Also the landing ground near Sythenex does not seem to appear any more.
Espace 3D Parapente
Route de Marceau
Lathuile.
This place is incredibly close to the Lathuile home of W.B.M. it is also on a road to Chevaline
Does anybody remember from the early days a MC coming down through Chevaline and possibly being seen by the builders and/or seen by WBM just before he reached the eglise in Chevaline? I seem to remember that it was mentioned in one of the early TV docos (possibly Panorama).
Does anyone know the the original source?
This sighting, if real, could be important because, given what we have recently found out, it probably was not LMC. So it could have been a random rider who had been up the combe and was just leaving or it could have been a rider who had given a pillion passenger a lift up the combe as michael norton has suggested.
Grotte de Seythenex
So, I am trying to check out key timings as I try to rebuild a ‘clean’ version of the timeline.
“Around 1pm the family left the campsite and drove towards the village of Chevaline”
And my timeline has the Al Hilli family in Chevaline/Arnand from approx 15:10. However it should not have taken them very long to drive directly there from their campsite.
So, where did they go?
One hint is that we were told that they did some souvenir shopping.
Another, more tenuous indication is that they went to the Grotte de Seythenex at some time in their stay (but we don’t know when).
If they actually went to the Grotte then their route that day would be very different than we have been led to believe. They could have been ‘followed’ in the loosest sense of the word and targeted as tourists.
Quote from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11021831/Orphaned-Brit-girl-parents-shot-Alps-tells-reveals-details-killer.html
Well if it was me they might have gone for Lunch although it is the law in France that you all must have lunch between 12- 1300.
Picnic?
@intp1
Yes, that is a very good suggestion.
Whether they went to a souvenir shop, a restaurant or Le Grotte, or even all three, there would be opportunities to interact with possible miscreants. Robbery-gone-wrong may not seem like a likely scenario but we are already deep in outlier country.
Maybe SM just rocked up and recognised the killer, thus precipitating the carnage
One very strange point about this slaughter.
Nobody has been caught.
Almost every other mass slaughter event, the perps are caught, usually within days.
Meaning they are caught, if they do not take their own lives or the police don’t kill them first.
The French Authorities, know the exact place and time this happened.
They have the dead bodies of those killed.
They know the movements of those killed, leading up to the moment.
They know the connections of victims to each other and of their connections to many other people.
They have DNA evidence.
They have statements from the two survivors.
They have statements from LMC.
They have statements from W.B.M.
They have statements from Zaid al-Hilli.
They have statements from Patrice Menegaldo.
They have statements from Nordahl Lelandais.
They have statements from Eric Devouassoux.
They have the spent slugs.
They have fragments of the gun grips.
They have the spent shell cases.
They have the cycle of Sylvain.
They have the car of Mr.al-Hilli.
They have the caravan of the al-Hilli family.
They have the al-Hilli camera.
Yet they apparently do not have a clue, who the killer or killers could be.
They also apparently do not have a motive.
Strange.
@Strange
It points to very efficient extraction or the French do not want and will not allow the truth to come out. Or Both.
Suggested Reasons:
* Politically very embarrassing for the French or their allies
* Technically embarrassing; such a huge cock up (by the French or its allies) that there would be public outrage
* A possibility I have hypothesised is a clash of 2 or more services unwittingly stumbling into each other which would be all of above.
* It is possible that it is classified for good reasons of national security; i.e. if we knew, we could agree it should be secret
It has security services involvement written all over it:
WBM looks and quacks like an agent
The immediate appearance of senior British embassy officials, in numbers at the scene by early the following morning.
The intense activity of French (and British) police and investigators to this day who’s responsibility seems to be to produce nothing.
Sylvain Mollier looks and quacks like an agent.
Mrs. al-Hilli was also an agent.
The “mother” of Mrs. al-Hilli, was also an agent.