Bernard Chabbert: ambassador of aviation culture and of microlighting!

Season 202216 December 20223 min read

For those who watched television in the 90s, Bernard Chabbert's programme Pégase, who left us suddenly this week, was a little like the equivalent of Georges Pernoux's Thalassa. The programme was in fact scheduled straight after it on France 3. Bernard popularised the culture of the air, just as Thalassa brought a culture of the sea into homes, with landmark programmes that made their mark, on Concorde for example, or the Spitfire, and which are still references today.

Bernard was above all a great journalist and man of culture, on Europe 1 and in Aviasport, among others. Beyond the general public, Bernard was a unique voice for telling the story of aviation, with extraordinary knowledge and a poetry that was both lyrical and rigorous. The La Ferté-Alais air show, which has for many years been one of the finest in France, was carried both by the strength of the Salis family and by the talent of Bernard, who made us live aviation as if in a Spielberg film. This voice and this culture carried generations of enthusiasts. He was clearly the Voice of aviation. Behind the journalist was a passionate pilot, of all kinds of flying, but always sharing a story about elegant machines or machines steeped in history.

Bernard Chabbert always loved in microlighting that creativity, that freedom and that simple joy around an "airfield" as at the beginning of aviation or at La Ferté. When he set up the Aerostar channel, the Federation supported his project and we made a film on the Tour ULM " La belle vadrouille " with the touch of Bernard and his wife Eve. Dominique Méreuze and Pierre-Henri Lopez did much to link microlighting to the great story of aviation that Bernard told, and he was present at many Federation events. An unwavering supporter of microlighting, he even became the owner of a wonderful FK-14 Le Mans microlight. We had asked Bernard to present part of the first edition of the MULM and he was still there for the latest edition. Personally, he is a man of whom one says one can be proud to have known, because through his intelligence and passion he gives access to magnificent pieces of humanity around our machines, able to turn an apparently insignificant anecdote into a great moment of humanism. In the history of microlighting, the programme USHUAIA or Perrin's film, Winged Migration, had in different registers the same impact and echo before communication formats in the 2000s took another turn. But art is untimely, and Bernard's films and stories are there for ever. On screen, he was what Saint-Exupéry could be for writing.

It is therefore with great tenderness and affection that the Federation fully shares the grief of his wife Eve and his son Antoine, himself a pilot. Bernard was a fine voice for the world of aeroplanes and microlights; we will keep him in our minds and hearts for a long time to come.

Sébastien Perrot

President of the French Microlight Federation

La belle vadrouille

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