Shropshire Star

Pilot crashed plane into field to avoid hitting power lines, report reveals

A light aircraft pilot crashed his plane into a field to avoid hitting power lines in an aborted test flight, air crash investigators have revealed.

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The Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) report says the "mishandled" take-off from Welshpool Airport, in Mid Wales, took place at 8.30am on March 13 and involved a Rans S5 Coyote.

The plane crashed into a ploughed field when attempting a take-off. The pilot is believed to have escaped injury.

An AAIB report into the accident stated: "The pilot was conducting an impromptu investigation of the aircraft's minimum unstick speed.

"However, as he abandoned the take-off, he was unable to prevent a turn to the right and the aircraft landed heavily in a ploughed field to the right of the runway."

The report says the Coyote was being flown by a 60-year-old unnamed pilot with 880 hours' flying experience. Unstick speed is the speed at which a plane can lift off the ground and continue take-off.

The crash left the aircraft with damage to the right, main and nose-landing gear, along with the propeller and main engine mounts.

Details of the crash were summarised in the report, which stated: "The pilot arrived at Welshpool Airport to find that the lengthy flight he had planned would not be possible due to low cloud.

"The aircraft had been fully refuelled the day before in anticipation of the intended flight and he states that he decided to perform a 'test flight' to investigate the minimum 'unstick' speed in this slightly heavier-than-normal condition.

"Having done this, he would continue to fly a circuit to reassess the weather conditions; the wind was calm."

The report said the pilot had crashed when taking action to avoid hitting a hedge at the end of the runway.

It stated: "As he was about halfway along the Runway 22 during the take-off roll, using somewhat less than full power and balancing the aircraft on its main wheels only, he became unhappy with the restricted forward visibility due to the extremely nose-high attitude.

"Fearing that he might run off the right side of the runway and potentially strike an edge light, he applied full power to clear the lights but was now faced with a dilemma – if he cut the power and abandoned the take off, he would probably overrun into the boundary hedge.

"The pilot instead chose to remain airborne under full power, in the hope that he would clear the hedge, although he now realised that the aircraft was travelling nearly at right angles to the runway over a ploughed field with the right wing very close to stalled.

"Any attempt to straighten up using left rudder would now leave it flying towards power cables, so he initially chose to accept the turn to the right and continue under full power.

"However, when he realised that this could make matters worse, he throttled back and accepted a very heavy landing in the ploughed field which collapsed the right and nose landing gear legs."

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