Pilot lands plane at Cardiff airport 'in dark with a torch'
29.11.06
A pilot was forced to land his private plane by tourchlight at Cardiff Airport last week, the South Wales Echo reports. The pilot then endured a second problem, after the schedule flight he then booked was hit by lightening!
It was pitch black when private pilot John George's electrics blew 18,000ft above the Brecon Beacons. It was nearly 18:00 and the chill in the air was causing more ice to freeze over the dials in his cockpit. His first attempt to de-ice the dials had just caused the electrical short. All he had to help to bring himself and his passenger down safely were a working radio and, crucially, a torch.
Mr George, who had been intending to fly his Cessna plane back to his native Cornwall, was forced to use the radio to call Cardiff Airport to request an emergency landing. He said: 'I had my friend Andrew shining a torch on the dials so that I could see them and the staff at Cardiff airport guiding me in to land. I needed all of my training to spot the runway through gaps in the clouds and bring it back down. I was lucky, somehow I managed not to panic.'
After performed an emergency landing on the main runway of Cardiff Airport, while 15 fire crews waited nervously, John and Andrew rushed into the terminal to buy tickets for the next Air Southwest flight to Newquay, just before 18:00 last Thursday. But in a bizarre twist of fate, that plane was struck by lightning and cancelled, leaving the two to drive a hire car back to Cornwall.
Cardiff Airport operations manager Graham Gamble said: 'After the Mayday call, we closed the runway and allowed the Cessna to land. We took all of the usual precautions and alerted the fire brigade.'
'The plane landed at 5.55pm and we kept it on the runway for a few minutes to check it over. Then we taxied it off the main runway so that normal service could resume. There was minimal disruption to any flights coming into and out of the airport.'
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