Tourist plane crash French Alps
 

The DM reports, rather strangely, that the aircraft was "reportedly on its maiden voyage", but I can't see any mention of that in the French press.

I think that's a misconstrued reference to it being the first flight for the unfortunate family who were passengers.

Rough translation from La Provence news site...

"The information made national headlines this morning. Saturday at 4:50 p.m., near Les Adrets in the Belledonne massif, a plane which was making a first flight from the Versoud aerodrome crashed shortly after takeoff. The five people on board died and the wreckage of the small plane was found "totally charred", firefighters said on Saturday.

Among the victims Frédéric Gilardot, the academic director of the national education services of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. The 66-year-old civil servant, appointed in March 2019 in the 04, was a pilot, member of the Versoud aerodrome.

Another victim, one of his friends, 57, a friend of the latter, 63, who had come with her two grandchildren, an 11-year-old boy and his 14-year-old cousin.

The autopsies of the victims, whose bodies were extracted late Saturday evening from the plane, are scheduled for Sunday. An investigation was opened and entrusted to the Isère gendarmerie group, the air transport gendarmerie brigade (BGTA) and the SRGTA (note: French air transport gendarmes) in Paris to determine the causes of this accident. . "At this stage of the investigations, the causes of the accident remain unknown", according to the public prosecutor of Grenoble Eric Vaillant."

https://www.laprovence.com/actu/en-d...urisme-en-iser

The same article suggests the aircraft in question was a Jodel 140. I'm not familiar with the performance characteristics or the seating capacity of the Jodel but that looks like a lot of weight for a small aircraft...but it is a Daily Mail report...

The Jodel D.140 is a load carrier and can lift five adults - though presumably performance would have been somewhat degraded at altitude. This seems to have been two men, a woman and two boys.

I saw a report that the engine quit shortly after take-off.
Googled the model as curious about seat nos and this came up:
https://www.ledauphine.com/faits-div...-en-belledonne

It's quite a large aircraft with a lot of lifting area and a 180 hp engine. It's a tailwheel type quite often used as a glider tug. Five on board is well within its capabilities, though not five heavy adults with full tanks. Though as two on board were children it should have been well in the envelope.
It looks as if the first flight actually referred to the passengers.

Given that the aircraft was built in 1963, that's probably a safe assumption.