On Sunday, authorities released the name of a pilot who died during a parachute jump 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 Country 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 posted to Facebook Saturday.
“My beloved daughter, my best friend and one of the two bright spots in my life passed away suddenly today,” Paul Georger wrote. “Melanie was a pilot, on the verge of fulfilling her dream of flying for the airline. She was doing what she loved most, 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 flyover of Niagara Falls for every skydive.
One of the parachutists who flew with Georger just before the plane crashed said he felt blessed to be alive and regretted that her life had ended so prematurely.
“For some reason God left me on Earth and I’m just blessed to still be here,” Walker told CBS affiliate WIVB-TV. “It’s just an eerie feeling that I was literally in that plane for a half hour before it crashed. Why didn’t it crash with us in it? Why didn’t it crash with more people in it? It’s surreal.”
He said the young pilot didn’t bother him and that she had personally contacted him and given him encouraging words about his tandem jump partner, which had boosted his confidence before he jumped.
“I give her credit for wanting to do what she did,” he said. “I really feel sorry for the company and the business that she worked for, because it’s a great company. I thought she did a great job with the training.”
Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti said if the plane had crashed just a few hundred yards away, the situation could have been much worse, WIVB-TV reported.
“Where it landed was just off the parkway. We’re looking west, Fort Niagara, it’s full of football players today,” Filicetti said. “We got lucky where it landed, but it’s an unfortunate incident.”
The Federal Aviation Administration 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 will lead the investigation into the crash.
According to a Facebook post from Eagle East Aviation, Georger earned her private pilot’s license in July 2021.