Plane crash 'devastating'
2010-02-15 09:46
Wolfram Zwecker
Durban - A light aircraft that had flown around the world ended up at the bottom of the sea over the weekend.
Carlos Garcia-Cabral and Sean Fraser, who had taken the Sling plane for a test flight on Saturday, managed to parachute to safety onto Tinley Manor beach north of Ballito on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast.
James Pitman, fellow owner of the plane, was on Sunday very relieved that the two had only light injuries, but was "devastated" by the loss of the prototype plane.
"That is why test flights are taken, to see what a plane is capable of and where its limits of safe performance are, but really, it is sad that we have lost the plane now, after our flight around the world," he said.
"To get the plane ready for production, certain tests and procedures have to be performed. The two pilots were busy with the test programme."
Part of this was to do a flat spin and then to recover. This was done successfully. They repeated the exercise but did not recover quickly enough, said Pitman.
Parachute
"The procedure is then to deploy the parachute, which is set in the nose of the plane, and the plane enters a controlled descent to the ground. The parachute did not open properly and the pilots, who each had their own parachutes too, opened the cabin roof at 1 200m above sea level and got out. Both were lightly injured on landing on the beach," said Pitman.
He and Mike Blyth, his fellow developer and co-owner of the plane, flew around the world in the plane in July and August 2009 to show the reliability of the plane, amongst other things.
"We had certificates from the Civil Aviation Authority to fly the prototype but the weekend's tests were part of the programme to begin mass production.
"It is a devastating blow to me and Mike to think that the plane, in which we flew around the world for 40 days and 40 nights, is now gone," he said.
"The plane floated for about two hours and just as police wanted to tow it to land, it disappeared under the waves.
"We will build another and continue, but there won't be another one like it."
- Beeld
