Rainer Schaller (1969-2022) has died. McFit has confirmed the death of its founder in a statement. “The last few days have left us shaken and affected. It is with great dismay that we have received the sad certainty that our founder Rainer Schaller and his son have been identified as having died in the plane crash in Costa Rica,” says an Instagram post by the fitness center Chain, which also shows a photo of the entrepreneur. Schaller’s private plane crashed off the coast of Costa Rica on October 21.
“His partner, her daughter, one of our colleagues and the pilot, who were also on board, are still among the missing,” the post continues. In this difficult time, all our sympathy goes to the relatives, “all the people who lost their lives in this accident or are still missing”.
About a week and a half after the crash, the authorities in Costa Rica announced that the search for the plane and the missing persons had been stopped. Four of the six people who were on board are still missing. The private Piaggio P.180 plane was on its way from Mexico to Limón province airport on Friday (October 21), the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Safety said after initial reports of the crash. At 6 p.m. local time (Saturday, 2 a.m. Central European Summer Time), radio contact with the machine was lost.
Rainer Schaller was born in Bamberg in 1969. After training as a retail salesman, he pursued the idea of entering the fitness industry based on the discounter principle. In 1996 he founded McFit and in 1997 he opened the first studio in Würzburg. From 2007 to 2010, Schaller was also the organizer of the Love Parade. After the accident at the 2010 event, he made the headlines.
