Bruno Bagnoud, Rescue pioneer and co-founder of Air Glaciers. (archive image)
Air-Glaciers confirmed a corresponding report from the newspaper “Le Nouvelliste” to the Keystone-SDA news agency. Bagnoud co-founded the Air-Glaciers airline in 1965 with pilots Hermann Geiger and Fernand Martignoni and ran it until 2020.
At that time, the three Valaisans had air rescue in their blood and, among other things, they found the means to finance the first Alouette III helicopter of the Air-Glaciers.
But for one of the founders, the adventure ended in death: the well-known glacier pilot Hermann Geiger died in 1966 when his plane crashed after colliding with a glider.
Bagnoud and his company were also not spared from drama and grief: in 1982 Fernand Martignoni died in a helicopter accident after touching the poorly marked cable of a private cable car near Les Diablerets VD.
The death of his son François-Xavier brought great sadness to the head of Air-Glacier. The young man returned to Valais in 1981 to help his father manage the airline. In his pocket he had a degree in aeronautical engineering from the USA.
At the age of 23 he became the youngest IFR commercial pilot for airplanes and helicopters in Europe. But on January 14, 1986, at the age of 24 and with 1200 hours of flight behind him, François-Xavier died in a helicopter crash during the Paris-Dakar Rally together with Thierry Sabine, the organizer of the rally, and the singer. French deadly Daniel Balavoina.
The circumstances of the incident, which killed five people, are controversial. Three years after their son’s death, Bruno Bagnoud and Albina du Boisrouvray founded the François-Xavier Bagnoud Foundation. Keep the memory of him by financing activities that are particularly close to him.
In 2020, Bagnoud started a new chapter after his company faced financial woes. Air-Glaciers and its competitor Air Zermatt have announced that in the future they will work more closely together and use synergies. However, they kept their own boards and bosses.
(SDA)
