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Friday, 16 July 2021

The Air Arm

We all have occasional little worries about stupid but highly improbable accidents ...

Strange Accidents Can Happen ......

.... such as getting your foot somehow jammed between the control pedals in your car. 

Indeed we have even covered some strange accidents involving stepladders and clothes horses on this blog. But there are some that take this to another level. Take for example the story about the light aircraft pilot who lost his arm ... not once but twice!

A retired doctor who had lost one forearm in an accident, but as a keen recreational pilot he wanted to carry on flying. So he designed and built his own prosthetic that would enable him to carry on with his hobby. He had specialised in prosthetics so he was confident his home-made device would do the trick .. it should be noted that he had held a flying licence for nine years, and was cleared fit to fly.

However when he took it on its maiden flight at Full Sutton Airfield, near York, the 69 year old pilot uncovered a nearly fatal flaw in the design. When the plane was about 5 foot (1.5m) from the ground the device detached from the controls .... leaving him unable to control the Jodel D117A plane, which crashed. Fortunately he was unhurt and the plane suffered only minor(ish) damage. 

Undaunted he devised a low tech solution .... he used Velcro strips to attach the device to the controls and he flew again. However he is not alone in being a one armed pilot, including of commercial passenger flights .... In February 2014, it was reported that a pilot lost control of a Flybe passenger plane from Birmingham, approaching Belfast City Airport in gusty conditions, after his artificial arm became detached as he was coming in to land.

In a statement, Flybe said the senior captain was one of its "most experienced and trusted pilots", and the safety of passengers and crew had not been compromised in any way.

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