A 55-year-old flight instructor and his 31-year-old man who had gone up for a night flying lesson are both lucky to be alive, after their single engine Cessna 152, registration G-BJKY, impacted a desolate hill in a region of Yorkshire, England known as Ingleborough, one of the three peaks in the Yorkshire Dales between the villages of Wham and Rathmell, as reported in the Blackpool Gazette, the Blackburn Citizen, and other British media sources, including the BBC, on Wednesday, March 23, 2011.
Both had taken off from Blackpool International Airport (BLK), on Monday night, March 21 at 7:18 p.m. GMT, after sunset in an aircraft from the Westair Flying School, which is based at the airport. Blackpool is located in North West England, near the Irish Sea, in Lancashire. A similar aircraft is shown in the attached video clip and slide show which accompany this article.
The plane, one of 5 Cessna aircraft owned by the school, had been checked out for a 100 minute flying lesson. The Cessna 152 rents for £129, the equivalent of USD $207 an hour, including taxes, fuel, and instruction.
The pilot, Mr. Adrian Smith, is also a deputy senior air traffic control officer at Blackpool Airport. The aircraft was headed north towards the small town of Kirkby Lonsdale, via Clitheroe.
The aircraft apparently got lost flying in poor visibility and dense clouds, causing the pilot to apparently experience loss of situational awareness (SA), resulting in controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). The plane went down nose first into the peak of a low lying mountain range, hitting it at about 9:18 p.m. local time, and causing a twisted, crumpled wreckage, when it struck the hillside at an elevation of 1,903 feet above sea level.
In total darkness, both pilot and passenger crawled from the crippled aircraft. The passenger, whose name has not been released had suffered a broken nose and ankle, while Mr. Smith, had sustained lesser injuries.
The pilot used his cell phone to dial 9-9-9, an emergency number and the British equivalent of 9-1-1. He had no idea of their location. It took responders nearly 3 hours to locate the crash site, with the aid of cell tower records.
A 36 man mountain rescue team and ground crews from Kendal, a town near the crash site, launched a major search for the downed plane.
According to the Blackpool Gazette, rescue coordinator Tom Redfern made these comments, saying "The wreckage of the plane is horrific, it’s totally mangled. I have no idea how they got out of the cockpit. They are extremely lucky to be alive. The two men were up there three or four hours before they were rescued and were very cold as they weren't dressed for being up a mountain."
First responders found the injured men at 12:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, March 22. Both were rushed to Lancaster Royal Infirmary at Lancaster University, where the passenger, who was from Blackburn, was treated for trauma injuries, and is expected to make a complete recovery.
As Mr. Redfern described the situation, "One of the men was deteriorating as we evacuated him from the plane and there were potentially four broken bones, including ankles, chest and facial injuries."
Both the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the British equivalent of the NTSB, and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) of the Department for Transport (DT) have been informed of the crash, and will be conducting a thorough review.
We have placed telephone calls leaving voice messages, followed by emails to Mr. John Hobday, Manager of Westair Flying School, but the school's offices were closed at the time. We will update this report when we hear back from Mr. Hobday, and hope that both injured men make a full and speedy recovery.
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