Madeleine Rachel Trask

Madeleine Rachel Trask was a 22 year old woman from Nottinghamshire who died on July 5, 2026, after a skydiving incident at Langar Airfield. At the time of her death, reporting about her life had not gone beyond the basic facts of the tragedy, and no detailed public account of her career, education, or family life had been published by reputable outlets. What is known comes almost entirely from police statements and the opening of the coroner's inquest into her death.

According to Nottinghamshire Police, officers were called to Langar Airfield, a parachuting centre near the Nottinghamshire village of Langar, at 12.13pm on July 5, 2026, following reports of a skydiving incident. She was found in a field next to the airfield and was pronounced dead at the scene. A post-mortem examination later established a provisional cause of death as a head injury.

On the day of the incident, Detective Inspector Rachel Mayfield of Nottinghamshire Police described it as a tragic incident and said officers were working with partners to understand what happened, extending condolences to Trask's family and everyone affected. British Skydiving, the sport's governing body in the United Kingdom, typically investigates fatalities at licensed drop zones through a Board of Inquiry, and any findings from an investigation into this incident had not been made public as of October 2026.

On October 15, 2026, more than three months after her death, assistant coroner Karen Boyle formally opened an inquest into Trask's death at Nottingham Council House. The coroner told the hearing that Trask had been formally identified at the scene at 1.54pm on the day of the incident and that the post-mortem had given a provisional finding of a head injury as the cause of death. The inquest was adjourned so that further inquiries into the circumstances of her death could be carried out, with a full hearing due to resume on a date that had not yet been confirmed.

Trask's death and the subsequent inquest opening drew wide attention because skydiving fatalities in the UK are rare and because so little else about her was publicly known. Beyond the police and coroner's statements, no interviews with family members, friends, or colleagues had been published, and her occupation, education, and personal life remained unreported in the sources available at the time of writing. This page will be updated as the inquest proceeds and as more becomes known about her life.