My Flying

There was a rather serious accident at the airfield today. During a routine winch launch of the Twin Astir, with an instructor and student on board, the left wing dropped and dragged in some thick knee high grass on the left of the runway.

They were unable to get the wings level and unfortunately pulled the cable release just too late. The aircraft had enough speed and energy to left its nose, with the left wing still on the ground and assisted by the light cross wind from the right, the aircraft cart wheeled in its yaw axis through a 180˚ in the near vertical to the left and impacted nose first about 25m to the left of the runway and about 100m from the launch point.

After the nose had impacted with the ground it was followed by the right wing. The aircraft then fell backwards and landed, pointing in the wrong direction, on its belly.

The student in the front sustained a broken left leg, just below the knee and the instructor was uninjured.

This is probably the most terrifying incident I have ever witnessed. I was at the launch point at the time and saw the wing drop. I wasn't too fazed as normally it is easy for the pilot to pick up the wing, but this time the wings didn't level out. In the mean time the winch was still pulling and the aircraft was picking up speed. Once the nose lifted and the cart wheel began the rest was like watching a super slow motion movie. It was totally surreal and unbelievable. No way, this isn't happening!

Reality arrived back with a thud as the aircraft impacted, rather silently oddly enough and the dust rose.

I glanced to my right and the rest of the guys were standing frozen, I shouted "let's go" and suddenly we were all running towards the crash site.

The glider is pretty buggered in my opinion. The nose is very crushed from the front for about 50 cm back. The right wing is cracked halfway down for its full width and the main spar can be seen pushing up the glass skin on top of the wing. The fuselage has a few short cracks half way down, on both sides, between the rear cockpit and the tail and the front canopy is cracked.

[edit: 25 June 2007 @ 12:15 pm
The information described above was posted only after reading the post by the pilot involved: Avcom Post. It contains exactly the same factual details.]

My thoughts are with the student and instructor involved. This is the first accident involving injury, on club soil; the club has had in its entire 30 year existence. Very sad.

Prior to the accident I had a very nice flight in light thermal conditions. My circuit went very well and my landing went of great, so much so that the instructor F(5) bragged about it to some of the other guys. 89,00ZAR.