DORINE BOURNETON SHE RETURNED TO THE SKY
Dorine Bourneton did not simply learn how to live again.
Dorine Bourneton did not simply learn how to live again. She returned to the place where everything had changed.
Dorine Bourneton fell in love with aviation as a child. Inspired by her father, an amateur pilot, she made her first solo flight at just 15 and dreamed of building her life in the sky.
One year later, everything changed.
In 1991, at 16, Dorine Bourneton was a passenger aboard a small aircraft when it crashed in severe weather in Haute Loire, France. Three people died. Dorine Bourneton was the only survivor. She was found after approximately twelve hours and her injuries left her paraplegic.
But the accident did not end her relationship with the sky.
At 19, Dorine Bourneton moved to Toulouse after discovering an aeroclub with aircraft adapted with hand controls. By 20, she had earned her pilot’s licence. It was not simply a return to flying. It was the beginning of a much larger fight.
At the time, French regulations prevented people with disabilities from accessing the professional pilot licence. Dorine Bourneton became an advocate for disabled pilots and helped push for change. In 2003, the regulations evolved, opening a path toward professional aviation for pilots with disabilities.
And still, she went further.
In 2015, Dorine Bourneton qualified in aerobatic flying, becoming the first paraplegic woman in the world to practise the discipline. That same year, she was named a Knight of France’s Legion of Honour. In 2018, she won the Coupe nationale Sud aerobatics competition in the Espoir category, competing alongside able bodied pilots.
Her story is therefore not simply one of surviving an accident.
It is a story about refusing to allow the world to decide where possibility ends.
Today, Dorine Bourneton continues to speak about disability, inclusion and resilience. In 2026, she also brought her life to the theatre in Voltige, a deeply personal stage work recounting the accident, her return to aviation and her fight to make space for disabled people in a world that had once told her no.
Perhaps the most extraordinary part of Dorine Bourneton’s story is this:
The sky was where her life changed forever.
And the sky was exactly where she chose to return.