The Nice prosecutor's office announces an operation to raise the reactors of the Ajaccio-Nice caravel, 58 years after the crash

This Monday, September 7, the Nice prosecutor's office announced that an operation to raise the reactors of the Ajaccio-Nice caravel, which was damaged at sea on September 11, 1968, will be carried out soon. With these new investigations, the families of the 95 victims hope to finally be able to know the exact circumstances of the crash.

This is new progress in the case of the crash of the Ajaccio-Nice caravel.

58 years after the events, an operation to raise the reactors of the aircraft which was damaged off the coast of Cap d'Antibes on September 11, 1968 will be carried out, indicated the Nice prosecutor's office in a press release sent to the press on Monday.

On the eve of the commemorations of the disaster which left 95 dead, this announcement represents a source of hope for the relatives of the victims, still seeking answers about the circumstances of the tragedy. “This is a more than rapid development compared to the wait we had and it is going in the right direction, reacted Mathieu Paoli, president of the association of families of the victims of the crash. We have been waiting for 58 years, and this is only moving now even though we have been asking for this increase for years.”

More than half a century later, the exact causes of the tragedy have still not been determined. A first investigation into manslaughter ended in 1973 with a dismissal of the case, the theory then being that of a fire in the toilet cubicle. This conclusion has never convinced the relatives of the victims, for whom the accident originated in a missile fired by mistake by the army.

Search operations

Investigations have recently accelerated in this case. Search operations for the wreckage were initiated at the end of 2025, as part of the opening of a judicial investigation on the charge of "subtraction of a document or object concerning a crime or offense to obstruct the manifestation of the truth".

According to the Nice public prosecutor's office, several expert assessments have thus made it possible to conclude that "the relevance of a lifting operation of the main identified parts including the reactors. Consequently, requests were made to several entities likely to carry out such a lifting operation. The first returns from a specialized public entity confirm the feasibility of the operation with an estimated duration of 6 days".

The modalities and timetable remain to be defined at this time, the objective being “to be able to proceed as soon as the conditions are met”. The victims' families hope that the operation can be carried out before the end of the year.