Staverton incident this afternoon.

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Member for

18 years 11 months

Posts: 8,847

Understand that a Cirrus aircraft had an engine failure on take-off and landed off airport. No serious injuries reported.

Original post

Member for

17 years 6 months

Posts: 1,433

Just spoken to the pilot, who is a forumite.

It sounds like he did a heck of a good job in very difficult circumstances.

I'm not going to comment on the accident - the AAIB get paid more than me to speculate - but the good news is that both occupants are OK.

The second occupant has back injuries but we are told will make a full recovery.

I'm sure the pilot will get round to posting something soon - but he's a bit busy at the moment!!

Member for

20 years 7 months

Posts: 2,623

Didn't manage to get any instructing done at Gloucester today (the usual weather), but one of our instructors saw & heard it happen, well done to all involved, certainly not the ideal time for an EFATO that's for sure.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

Cross posted for info.

Firstly thank you to those who have wished a speedy recovery to our fellow pilot Eddie. I am happy to report that he should hopefully be out of hospital next week with a back brace, and should make a full recovery thank god. I'm going to see him tomorrow afternoon, and I have printed off these pages minus the speculation to show to him, which I am sure that he will appreciate.

I'd also like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came to our aid - (in no particular order): Gloucestershire Airport Air Traffic/Operations; Gloucestershire Airport Fire Service, who arrived within minutes of the incident despite the inaccessibility of the crash site; Gloucestershire Police, who again arrived very quickly on scene; the crew of the (Bond?) EC-135 Air Ambulance, who saved Eddie any further injury by being able to get right to the crash site as no vehicle could get through; Gloucestershire Ambulance Service, who again did a great job in getting to us quickly; the crew of the R44 that found us within 30 seconds of the crash and reported our position back to the airport; the engineers from RGV who made the aircraft safe; and to anyone else who I have forgotten to mention, my apologies as my memory is quite abysmal!

We all want to know what caused the engine to fail, none moreso than Eddie and myself, but it never helped anyone to speculate as to the cause of the failure and this is something that I simply will not do. Anyway, rant over! Here is a brief account of what happened as I recall:

I collected the aircraft, a Cirrus SR-22, from Gloucestershire Airport to fly back to Turweston. I was in the right seat, with Eddie in the left seat. Nothing was even remotely out of place during the pre-flight inspection and power checks, with the aircraft running perfectly smoothly, as you would expect with an aircraft that has only just completed 100 hours! Takeoff run was normal, we became airbourne and the flaps were raised at the correct speed. I won't elaborate on the details, but at approximately 150ft AGL the engine stopped producing power although the propellor continued to windmill.

My initial reaction was complete disbelief, but that only lasted a fraction of a second and training took over. Lowering the nose, I evaluated my option for landing sites. Buildings and a main road to the North, power lines to the South, leaving only two options within reach: first was a field immediately in front of me, which I judged I could easily get into - however, were I to force land in this field I could see that I would have far too much inertia and would end up going through the hedge at the end, up the embankment and would end up tearing through the barrier and come to a halt in the middle of the M5 Shocked The second potential site was the field immediately adjoining the M5 on the East side. No choice in reality, I was going to have to glide across the M5. I knew that I would be seriously stretching the glide to get there without hitting the M5, and I was certain that we were going to stall in, but I would much rather stall in and just risk injury to myself and my passenger than potentially kill god knows how many people on the motorway - a definite no-brainer.

As we approached the M5 I was trading speed for to keep height, trying to allow myself as much margin as possible to cross the motorway sucessfully. At this point I started to put out a mayday call, which sounded very panicked to my ears! By this time we were descending to keep the aircraft flying, and I realised that I would sucessfully clear the M5 thank god; we did so with 25ft or so to spare!

The next problem was that there was a tall tree between the aircraft and the intended landing site. I had spotted this as soon as I had made the decision to glide across the M5, but I knew that I could not risk a turn around it at such low speed for fear of stalling and spinning onto the motorway, so I did the only thing you can do in a situation like this - fly smack bang into the middle of it! The aircraft very nearly cleared the tree, but as we were descending the we hit the top two-foot of it. The decelerration of the impact was a good deal more than I expected, and I believe that the underside of the fuselage took quite a bit of damage as the branches were rather substantial - there was one which had torn in about 10 inches right the way through the right wing!

By some minor miracle we remained flying after clearing the tree, but only for a quarter of a second or so. The aircraft then stalled heavily at approximately 50ft AGL. I attempted to lower the nose to counter the stall, and then attempted raising it again bring the aircraft into some kind of flare to cushion the impact, but whether through the aircraft being too far stalled or the control surfaces being damaged the aircraft did not respond to any pitch inputs and hit the ground with a very high rate of descent in a slight nose-low attitude.

At this point of impact I believe that I was rendered unconcious for a very brief period, as I can't remember the impact but I can remember falling towards the ground and then sliding along for about 10 meters, when infact the aircraft had travelled nearly 80 metres along the ground from the initial point of impact! I vacated the aircraft unassisted and went round to help Eddie out, who despite his injuries had managed to pull himself most of the way out onto the wing. Thank god there was no fire, and the fire crews from the airport turned up minutes later to help us.

So, that's it as far as I can recall. To give you some idea of timescale, from the donkey dieing to the crash was under 10 seconds from what I understand. I have no idea what caused the engine to cease working, but i'm sure we'll find out in due course from the AAIB. To be honest it still feels like a bad dream, the reality hasn't hit home quite yet!

Speaking of which, i'm planning to be at Gloucester to watch the recovery of the aircraft from the field using specialist equipment from Farnborough - rather inconsiderate of me to put down in just about the most inaccessible field in Gloucestershire! Laughing

Moggy