Saturday, June 20, 2009

It WAS an off day, until.....

As I already mentioned, yesterday, Friday, I took a day off. A couple of hours before leaving for the flight instructor's meeting, I got a call from one of "my" air fields.... a PA-18 had crashed on a sports field next to the air field. For those who don't know, a PA-18 is a cute little 2-seater aircraft called Piper Super Cub.... my favorite type of small plane.

Since this air field is located practically in my backyard, and this one politically a very sensitive one (lots of local pressure against it), I drove over to find out what happened. In the mean time I also received calls from the various police stations, etc. so I knew our alarm system worked.

This is what was left of the aircraft.....


yes, the red marks above the wheel is blood...




Of course our press is already reporting about it in the local newspapers, with residents saying how it was only shear luck that there were no children playing on that field at the time.... a few minutes later soccer training was scheduled. Yep, we were lucky in that. But the very experienced instructor on board is seriously injured and probably won't survive, his student walked out of the plane but was taken to a local hospital.

So no, my life is definitely NOT boring!

Now I have to get ready for the new air shows. Weather is great at the moment but rain showers expected this afternoon.

Bye for now!

Dorrie

P.S. back from the air shows... all went well! Pictures maybe later, if they came out interesting enough.

3 comments:

  1. That one in a million risk is why I don't like flying.

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  2. Doug, driving the highways is more dangerous... oh, and in this case, it was probably the pilots fault... you NEVER try to return to the airfield at low altitude (and strong tail wind), you land straight out... there were fields enough.

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