Ubisoft co-founder Claude Guillemot has died in a plane crash

(bloomberg.com)

90 points by drayfield3 hours ago

13 comments

comrade12341 hour ago
Personal aircraft. The great equalizer.
- kylecazar1 hour ago
 I clicked a news article a few months ago about a crash... Google has since decided I need to know about all future aviation accidents. I was surprised how frequent it happens. Two brothers were killed in a Cessna just the other day.I suppose it's a combination of lower maintenance standards and pilot experience, definitely doesn't make me want to hop in a small plane anytime soon.
 - ultrarunner1 hour ago
 Counterintuitively, it's probably the unrealistically high maintenance standards that lead to 1) no available qualified mechanics, and 2) incredibly high prices, resulting in 3) deferring whatever is possible to defer. This is the situation in the US; I imagine costs are doubly impactful in a country like France.
 - jmward011 hour ago
 Aviation is in a huge rut. A major issue is that innovation is nearly dead. Want to bring a new aircraft to market? Got 5-10 years to get it certified while not being able to sell it to a market size of....? How about a new engine? In GA we fly 80yo designs around not because they are great, but because nobody can innovate to bring in the better stuff. I have a lot of hope for electric aviation because a new regulatory space and simpler designs may mean faster certification which could lead to real innovation in the space.
 - clarkmoody3 minutes ago
 Don't forget that the incumbents will fight to keep regulatory barriers high.
 - airstrike38 minutes ago
 I'd read this blog post.
 - NordSteve1 hour ago
 It's certainly possible to maintain GA aircraft to a high standard and not break the bank. For example, a flying club I'm in has Cessna 172s for $116/hr wet with no-compromises maintenance.
 - ultrarunner28 minutes ago
 If you're not directly involved in the maintenance, I am skeptical. For example, many flying clubs only exist because they have members who are A&Ps / IAs, who maintain the plane in consideration of membership. That's a workaround for the problem I'm presenting. I won't say it's impossible, but it's increasingly difficult and location-dependent.
 - pixl971 hour ago
 >unrealistically high maintenance standardsNa, no thank you. I prefer planes not falling out of the sky, especially personal aircraft that already have a very high crash rate due to pilot error alone.>deferring whatever is possible to deferYea, I don't think so. I've seen too many important but non life or death maintenance deferred for reasons outside of money that lead to later disaster. People just kind of suck at it unless they are forced.
 - ultrarunner1 hour ago
 Well, you'll probably get your wish in the US anyway. I just paid $50 for a 2 inch square vacuum pump cover that should have cost $5. I have oil hoses that I would like to replace, but the $750 price tag (up $200 in six months) is giving me pause— replace, hope for the best, or hang it up and stop flying?Like it or not, more force will definitely raise costs, but it'll also push folks from category one to categories two and three. Or they'll just ignore the regs and begin a normalization of deviance.[0] <a href="https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/superior08-11778.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/superior08-11...</a>
 - robcohen1 hour ago
 So right now, A&Ps make about 120-150 per hour, and they have the skills to get hired at dealerships where the hourly is above 200. There are not enough A&Ps.I understand the logic you're using when you say you're happy that the standards are high. What you don't understand is how many A&Ps pencil whip annuals, or overlook corrosion or other safety issues all the time. They are overworked, and spend their time focused on a lot of box checking things that do not matter much and not enough time focusing on the things that do.Let me make it clearer. If you used the same standards for your car, you'd have to get it fully reinspected every year and fix everything. A little corrosion on your hubcaps? Replace all of them (at 20x the cost you're used to). A chip in your windshield (replace the entire windshield at 10x the cost). Etc etc.Source: I am studying for the A&P and I own a Cessna 182. The regs really do need to change for smaller certificated aircraft (such as changing annuals to semi-annuals). Look up Mike Busch and his videos on what reforms should look like.I just had my plane in for an annual. No significant issues. Took 5 months. My plane was in the shop for 5 months. Remember, this is required ANNUALLY. That's how bad the shortage is right now. It's bad enough that I'm willing to take 6 months off work to go __become__ an A&P so I don't need to deal with them anymore.
 markus_zhang23 minutes ago
 This sounds crazy. I wonder how it looks like in Canada. BTW A&P course only takes 6 months?
 - echoangle1 hour ago
 Citation needed. Afaik they mostly crash from pilot error, not technical problems caused by too little maintenance.
 - bombcar2 minutes ago
 The vast majority of GA crashes are pilot error directly or indirectly (taking off without fuel is "technically" a mechanical issue but really pilot failure).Equipment failure is pretty low on list.
 - dirtbagskier1 hour ago
 [dead]
 - mc3216 minutes ago
 THere are parachutes for small aircraft these days. If I were flying one and had their money I would get that installed. Of course that doesn’t protect against crashing into mountainsides or losing ones orientation, but it does help against engine failure at altitude.
- jmartrican18 minutes ago
 I worked for a small successful company in the pharmaceutical industry. One of their founders died in a crash in his small personal aircraft. He was a really nice guy and very charismatic. I was not working there when the accident happened, but I was sad to hear about it.I agree with OP's sentiment.
- master_crab1 hour ago
 “Doctor killer” for a reason.It can be monotonous and degrading, but commercial air is the safe way to travel.
 - altmanaltman1 hour ago
 It was a Cessna 421 so its not really about travel but flying as a hobby most likely.
 - weaksauce12 minutes ago
 probably a hobby but a 421 is a high performance dual engine with a pressurized cabin... that's a lot of plane and dual engines are difficult to fly with a lot of technical knowledge and practice to handle an engine out procedure safely. this kind of plane very commonly kills doctors and other high earning individuals that don't have the time to keep their time in the plane to stay recent.a lot of time people do buy multi engine planes for travel so it's not certain it was just a hobby.
- pixl971 hour ago
 Seems aircraft have been hard on tech this week.
Insanity1 hour ago
I briefly entertained flying planes as a hobby. I live next to a small-ish local airfield and a coworker of mine got his license there. Then I learned more about it, and there's way to many accidents like these for me to be comfortable with the risk I'd be taking.I have no issue with flying commercial planes, but I guess I don't trust myself _and_ the smaller planes enough to do this.RIP Claude, horrible way to die.
- bombcar1 minute ago
 I had a similar decision to make (pilot or motorbike) and the fact that 60%+ of aviation deaths are pilot error and something like 60%+ of motorcycle crashes are NOT the rider's fault - led me to be a pilot. At least then I can try to make good decisions, e.g, DO NOT FLY INTO WEATHER.
- miketery42 minutes ago
 I got my glider license at 16 and private at 17. Majority of accidents are human error. Though yes an accident with a plane is much costlier than one with a car.I encourage you to read NTSB accident reports. The work the investigators do and the reports they assemble are unparalleled. There are also good parallels to complex systems in general.
 - gpm17 minutes ago
 It seems like unjustifiable hubris to assume that I'm significantly less susceptible to human error than the average person that decides to become a pilot.
 - applfanboysbgon3 minutes ago
 If you're even thinking about the danger, it's absolutely justifiable to believe you're above the average already. The average person has zero regard for their own safety; governments have to literally force people to wear seatbelts in cars or helmets on motorcycles because they won't do it without threat of financial penalty.
cf100clunk1 hour ago
Similarly, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608732">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48608732</a>
lstodd7 minutes ago
memento mori
m0llusk11 minutes ago
This sort of thing is one of the reasons Elon became so important at Tesla. The other key players died in a freakish plane crash, apparently hitting transmission lines at low altitude which is not something parachutes would likely have helped with.<a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/02/plane-crash-kills-tesla-employees/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2010/02/plane-crash-kills-tesla-employ...</a>
- sourcegrift1 minute ago
 And he doomed tesla which was earlier soaring to become a trillion dollar company
cpncrunch1 hour ago
Non paywall source: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/ubisofts-co-founder-claude-guillemot-dies-plane-crash-2026-06-20/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/ubisofts-co-founder-claude-gui...</a>
- SoftTalker1 hour ago
 Paywall there for me, or "allow ads."Other than the fact that the crash happened, there doesn't seem to be any more detailed news yet, so the headline says pretty much what there is to know at this time.
toomuchtodo29 minutes ago
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Guillemot" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Guillemot</a>
BoredPositron34 minutes ago
Bad two weeks for aviation.
- zahlman27 minutes ago
 Hmm? What else did I miss?
 - toomuchtodo20 minutes ago
 Joshua Baer, founder and CEO of Austin's Capital Factory VC firm, killed in plane crash near Laredo, Texas.<a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=capital%20factory%20Joshua%20Baer%20crash&sort=byDate&type=story" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...</a>
brador1 hour ago
Why don't planes have parachutes? like a huge parachute that pops on stall to slowly descent the plane?
- verelo57 minutes ago
 Some do. Sr-22 for example.However, often if you’re handling things well, loosing an engine isn’t the end of the world.A lot of accidents happen very close to the ground, at height wear a parachute wouldn’t necessarily be helpful anyway.A parachute, a great solution for some scenarios, but for many, it’s not going to change the outcome. Such examples would be mid collisions, low altitude spiral dives, fires, or anything related to a shortage of oxygen. You also need to consider that during a lot of accidents, other factors, such as weather might be impacting the decision matrix of the pilot, and that might prevent them from using a parachute until it’s too late.The parachutes are also another maintenance item in increasing the cost of running the plane, and generally, the airframe won’t survive the accident, so people are hesitant to deploy them.
- dxdm59 minutes ago
 Some do:<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_System" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Airframe_Parachute_Syst...</a>
 - psvv0 minutes ago
 Funny, I put parachutes on my airplanes in kerbal space program (as a safety feature) but never considered what the real-life analogue to that would be. Turns out it's very similar!
- jmward0156 minutes ago
 Some do [1]. But in GA the costs to fly are so high that adding yet another cost means it is impractical for most GA pilots.[1] <a href="https://brsaerospace.com/" rel="nofollow">https://brsaerospace.com/</a>
speedgoose1 hour ago
[flagged]
- nullable_bool1 hour ago
 Im going to put my money on the latter.
- smt881 hour ago
 It seems like you’re just trying to say he was a bad guy and you’re glad he’s dead, which is a valid way to feel, but doesn’t seem like the right type of comment for HN.Maybe framing it as, “For those who don’t know this name, here’s why I do:” would be more interesting and helpful.
 - speedgoose1 hour ago
 No, I’m not glad he is dead.
iwontberude30 minutes ago
So many nerds here in Silicon Valley love to fly small aircraft, it’s an autistic comorbidity. You’ll never catch me acting so foolish.
- infecto7 minutes ago
 I would argue it has a much closer intersection with wealth.
- GlacierFox27 minutes ago
 "autistic comorbidity"Wtf haha. Everything's autism nowadays isn't it.Perhaps it's just an alignment of having the money to buy a small plane and being interested in planes.