French copilot on AirAsia’s missing jet was ‘excellent', sister says
The French copilot Rémi Plesel on board the AirAsia plane carrying 162 people that went missing in Indonesia Sunday was an “excellent” professional, his sister said Monday.
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The man from the French overseas department of Martinique in the Caribbean had been living in Indonesia for three years and this is where "he was able to become a pilot”, his sister Renée said on the French radio RTL.
“He wanted to be a pilot since he was a child, it was his dream”, Renée said on RTL, adding that he was "very good, excellent".
“We are very sad. We are waiting for some news but we know there is little hope to find him alive. In general when a plane crashes, there are very few survivors”, she commented.
The copilot’s mother Rolande Peronet-Plesel, who spoke on the French TV news channel BFMTV, said they got a call from Rémi’s girlfriend at 3am telling them the aircraft he was flying had crashed.
The AirAsia plane from the Malaysian low cost company disappeared Sunday after the pilots had asked permission from Jakarta air traffic control to deviate from its flight plan and climb above bad weather in an area noted for severe thunderstorms.
Research is still going on and the plane has not been found at this time.
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