Officials said two accomplices set the plan in motion by taking a helicopter lesson, and when they returned for a second lesson, kidnapped the instructor and forced him to fly into the yard of the penitentiary, which was not covered with anti-helicopter netting.

The instructor was told to land in the prison courtyard, and while the accomplices covered the courtyard with automatic rifles, Mr. Faïd emerged after unlocking at least two prison doors, officials said. He then boarded the helicopter and the pilot flew to the north of Paris and landed in a field.

The helicopter was abandoned there, and the pilot was left distraught but unharmed. Mr. Faïd and his accomplices fled in a car that had been parked nearby for the next leg of the escape. The team left that vehicle in a parking lot and switched cars.

At the time, Ms. Belloubet described the escape as “very well prepared” and said that Mr. Faïd’s accomplices might have surveyed the prison by using drones in order to determine the exact place to land the helicopter.

It was the second time that Mr. Faïd had escaped from prison. The first time, in 2013, he took four prison guards hostage while using plastic explosives to blast his way through five sets of prison doors, officials said, then met an accomplice who was waiting in a car. Mr. Faïd was recaptured several weeks later.

This time, while he eluded the police somewhat longer, he had several close calls and was almost caught in July, when the police caught sight of him in the Val d’Oise.

The reaction on Twitter on Wednesday to the recapture was made up mostly of congratulatory notes to the police, but here and there the response was, if anything, a little wistful. Although no one disputed Mr. Faïd had done bad things, he has gained a somewhat mythical status, and even detectives admit that he is far from an ordinary criminal.