Woman flies with geese over the Alps

Nathalie Maniglier suffers from a degenerative eye condition and has a special wish: Before she loses her sight, she wants to experience a bird’s-eye view.

She achieved that ambition on Wednesday, when pilot Dominique Cruciani took her up in his microlight over the French Alps, accompanied by a flock of juvenile geese trained to follow the aircraft through the skies.

Back on the ground at the airfield on the southern shore of Lake Annecy, Maniglier was so moved by what she had seen that she embraced the family member who came with her, and sobbed onto her shoulder.

“It was magical. To see them flying in formation was really great. There’s lots of emotion,” Maniglier said after her 30minute flight.

“I have a congenital illness. I can only see in one eye. “I’m making the most of it.” Cruciani first flew alongside birds when he was hired as a pilot on a documentary film.

Last year, he decided to turn that experience into a commercial venture.

His company charges customers €450 (R7,720) for a flight in the passenger seat of his microlight, shadowed by geese.

A colleague, Cassandre Schneider, is in charge of training the geese.

She got them as hatchlings, and spent hours in their company.

Once they grew flight feathers, she started going up in a microlight, first for a oneminute flight, then for twice that time the next day.

The geese followed. Now aged three months, the geese can shadow the microlight for about an hour.

When the geese reach three years old, they will want to join the migration routes, so the plan is to help them return to the wild.