On 21 October 2022, Schaller and his son Aaron died in a private plane crash in Costa Rica.

[17] By the end of 2020, Schaller's group of companies employed 41,000 people in 48 countries, managed 17 different brands and more than 1,000 studios.

[20][better source needed] In 2010, however, he came under fire[21][22] for the Love Parade disaster in Duisburg, which left 21 people dead and 652 injured.

[23] Schaller testified as a witness in the court proceedings on the accident in 2018, accepted moral responsibility, but was not charged.

[24] On 21 October 2022, a Piaggio P.180 Avanti plane carrying Schaller, his partner Christine Schikorsky, their two children, a 66-year-old Swiss pilot and another German passenger crashed into the Caribbean Sea on approach to Limón, Costa Rica, at the end of a flight from Palenque, Mexico.