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Passenger Lands Plane After Pilot Collapses and Dies At the Controls

Posted by Soulskill on from the landing-is-the-most-important-part-of-flying dept.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "NBC reports that flying instructors at Humberside Airport, near the city of Hull in northeast England, told a passenger who had never flown before how to land a four-seater Cessna 172 after the pilot collapsed and died at the controls. Passenger John Wildey explained to air traffic controllers that he had no flying experience and that the pilot could not control the plane. 'It came down with a bump, a bump, a bump, hit the front end down, I heard some crashing and it's come to a halt,' said Stuart Sykes. 'There were a few sparks and three or four crashes, that must have been the propeller hitting the floor. Then it uprighted again and it came to a stop.' Roads around the airport were closed while two incoming flights to the airport, from Scotland and the Netherlands, were delayed as a result of the incident. The passenger took four passes of the runway, and there were cheers from the control tower when it finally came to a halt on the ground. 'For somebody who is not a pilot but has been around airfields and been a passenger on several occasions to take control is nothing short of phenomenal," said Richard Tomlinson. "He made quite a good landing, actually,' added flight instructor Murray. 'He didn't know the layout of the airplane. He didn't have lights on so he was absolutely flying blind as well.'"

3 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Shirley.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Dunn was over Unger, and I was over Dunn.

  2. Re:FAA by neminem · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    No, that's not the meme, get it right. The meme is, "THANKS, Obama!

  3. Slashdot blocking ivpn ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    (Disclaimer: this post is offtopic - though good job on the passenger, incidentally, and so on)

    I'm using iVPN for all my browsing - and trying to reach Slashdot through their Swiss gateway is yielding a timeout (the NL gateway is working fine - for now).

    What the fuck, slashdot ? first Tor, now VPN services ? If you're afraid of abuse, simply set the comment section as read-only when going through Tor/a VPN, except for logged-in users.

    This is the last place where I would expect this kind of nonsense.