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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.
Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.
Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.
Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.
Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.