A novel about a whole planeload of Doppelgänger

Question

I read this Fantasy novel recently, in late 2020 or 2021. I read it in a paperback in French. I believe it was indeed originally written in French, but I might be mistaken.

The book is full of flashbacks, but after this time, I don't remember exactly how it actually starts. The only thing I am positive about, it was not at the logical beginning. But my memory puts it back more or less in chronological order, as follows.

So the pilot of a commercial flight sees a freak storm rapidly forming just ahead of his path, too fast to avoid. (This is not the "Fantasy" aspect, such a case really happened a few weeks ago). When he emerges out of the storm, his plane has been severely battered. He sends a "Mayday" and is told to land on a military base instead of a regular airport. A few jets armed with missiles follow him to show they are serious about it.

There the crew and the passengers disembark between two rows of soldiers in anti-contamination suits and bearing weapons (just like, a few months earlier, in February 2020, my wife and I had disembarked from our cruise ship, which, fortunately, was Covid-free, but nobody wanted to take any chances).

To make a long story short, some months earlier, the same plane with the same crew and the same passengers had already landed, also severely battered after crossing a freak storm, but still able to make it at the right place and the right time, give or take only a few hours.

The remainder of the book, in chronological disorder, is about the interactions of the crew and passengers of this "Doppleganger plane" with their "originals".

Answer 1

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. From this review:

Le Tellier investigates how people cope (or don't cope) when their idea of reality gets defeated: A flight from Paris to New York is caught in a storm, then lands in the US - twice, once in March, once in June 2021. And it's the exact same machine, with the exact same people inside; people who now exist twice. Their March versions are collected and brought to the hangar, so they can meet their June version; security experts, politicians, the media, and religious groups get involved. The public is alarmed, the pairs of doppelgängers (who is whose doppelgänger in such a scenario?) try to fight the breakdown of their lives: Who gets the apartment, the spouse, the kids, the job now? And where the hell is the serial killer that boarded the plane?

Found with a search for site:goodreads.com plane storm doppelganger

It was indeed first published in French.

« Il est une chose admirable qui surpasse toujours la connaissance, l'intelligence, et même le génie, c'est l'incompréhension. »
En juin 2021, un événement insensé bouleverse les vies de centaines d'hommes et de femmes, tous passagers d'un vol Paris-New York. Parmi eux : Blake, père de famille respectable et néanmoins tueur à gages ; Slimboy, pop star nigériane, las de vivre dans le mensonge ; Joanna, redoutable avocate rattrapée par ses failles ; ou encore Victor Miesel, écrivain confidentiel soudain devenu culte.
Tous croyaient avoir une vie secrète. Nul n'imaginait à quel point c'était vrai.

Roman virtuose où la logique rencontre le magique, L'anomalie explore cette part de nous-mêmes qui nous échappe.

Google Translate:

"There is one admirable thing which always surpasses knowledge, intelligence, and even genius, and that is incomprehension."
In June 2021, an insane event disrupted the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a Paris-New York flight. Among them: Blake, respectable family man and nevertheless hitman; Slimboy, Nigerian pop star, tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer caught up in her flaws; or Victor Miesel, a confidential writer who suddenly became cult. Everyone believed they had a secret life. No one imagined how true this was.

A virtuoso novel where logic meets magic, The Anomaly explores this part of ourselves that escapes us.