Pilot living "her dream" dies in crash after skydivers jump from plane

Officials on Sunday released the name of a pilot who died in a skydiving flight after her passengers jumped from the aircraft near the 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 to become a commercial pilot, her father said Saturday in a statement on Facebook .

"My beloved daughter, my best friend and one of the two lights of my life passed away suddenly today," Paul Georger wrote. "Melanie was a pilot, on the cusp of realizing her dream to fly for the airlines. She was doing what she loved, flying for a local skydiving company, when her plane crashed."

The skydiving company, identified by Sheriff's Office as Skydive the Falls declined to comment. The company advertises a scenic flyover of Niagara Falls before each skydive.

One of the skydivers on a flight with Georger right before the one that crashed said he felt blessed to be alive and lamented that her life was cut short.

"For some reason God left me on Earth and I'm just blessed to still be around," Walker told CBS affiliate WIVB-TV . "It's just an eerie feeling that I was on that plane literally a half hour before it crashed. Why didn't it crash with us on it? Why didn't it crash with more people on it? It's surreal."

He said was unconcerned by the pilot's youth, and that she checked in with him personally and shared encouraging words about his tandem skydiving partner, boosting his confidence before he jumped.

"I give her props for wanting to do what she was doing," he said. "I really feel bad for the business and the company she was working for, because they're a great company. I thought she did a great job training."

Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti said if the plane crashed just a couple hundred feet away from where it did, it could've been a lot worse, WIVB-TV reported.

"Where it landed was just off the parkway. We look to the west near Fort Niagara, it's full of soccer players today," Filicetti said. "We're lucky where it landed, but it is an unfortunate incident."

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the airplane was a single-engine Cessna 208B. It crashed near a road in Youngstown, fewer 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 certificate in July 2021.