As the plane he was travelling in plummeted 8,000ft from the sky, millionaire Fred Jones believed it was the end.

When his broken body was pulled from the wreckage on a hillside at Ratlinghope in the Long Mynd area of Shropshire, family and friends also feared the worst.

In a coma for three weeks, he also lost an eye and his nose, broke his spine, shoulder, jaw and ankle in the terrifying crash.

He spent three months in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Oswestry Orthopaedic Hospital before he was allowed home, and doctors treating him said he would never walk again and would be left permanently brain damaged.

But amazingly, 20 years later, Fred, from Wombourne, is a successful businessman and leading a normal life.

In celebration of two decades he never thought he would have, he is holding a party for the consultants, paramedics and a farmer who helped to saved his life.

He will be travelling on the Severn Valley Railway to Bridgnorth as part of the celebrations.

Fred, now aged 57, said: “I cannot thank these people enough. No-one expected me to survive that crash and I want to thank the people that saved me.”

The accident shocked the region when it happened on April 2, 1988.

Fred, a qualified pilot, was in a Piper Cherokee which was being flown by an instructor. They had set off from Halfpenny Green airport in Bobbington, near Bridgnorth, en route to Wales, but bad weather meant dangerous flying conditions and the plane iced up when they hit freezing cloud.

“We couldn’t see a thing through the window because it was thick with ice,” recalled Fred. “But I could see the altometer in free fall and I thought, ‘that’s it’.

“I remember it right up to the last second and then everything went black.”

The plane had smashed into a hillside at Ratlinghope. Fred hit the dashboard and the instructor, Kenneth Turner, from Cradley Heath, was flung from the plane but also survived. When Fred was pulled from the wreckage he was virtually unrecognisable and he was not expected to pull through.

Years of treatment followed, but he set up a new business, Stainless and Alloy Supplies in Oldbury, and except for a couple of scars on his chin, the lasting damage of the accident can barely be seen.

On Sunday, Fred is taking the men he credits with saving his life onto the observation carriage of the Severn Valley Railway, where they will enjoy a ride to Bridgnorth and back in celebration.

On the train will be Shrewsbury maxifacial consultant Stephen Olley, spinal injury specialist Waghi El Masri, senior prosthetist Bryan Hyde-Jones, paramedic Stan Bloor and ambulance driver Dave Allen.

Also coming along will be farmer John Sankey, who towed the ambulance across his fields to get to the wreckage of the plane.

“Without their help I may not be here,” said Fred, who is married to Peta, 55, and has two sons Simon, 29 and Peter, 26.