G-BLJO had an off-field landing after an apparent engine failure left downwind on RW 20 at Shroreham yesterday (Mon 2 Jan 2023). Photos show that the nose wheel collapsed. Pilot has reportedly “suffered minor injuries”. I’d just shut the aircraft down when this happened but apparenelt the pilot was very calm and collected during his Mayday call.
Glad he’s alright.
aircraft sustained minor damage
Luckily… crash? Not sure that qualifies as dramatic an occurrence as in the title of this thread
Dan wrote:
Not sure that qualifies as dramatic an occurrence as in the title of this thread
Well, there was a large emergency response:
eurogaguest1980 wrote:
Well, there was a large emergency response:
It certainly looks dramatic.
Well, there was a large emergency response
Absolutely. Add to that the title scene of an aircraft crash
…unfortunately downgraded to incident in the next line
Well, one fireman told me their job has become rather boring, because improvements in electrical appliances (which used to generate lots of good work) and other stuff means there aren’t many fires anymore. They tend to rotate on- and off-airport and off-airport they get stuff like a candle setting off an aerosol can in somebody’s bathroom…
I used to do quite satisfactory fires with ex TB20 tyres (they burn all night – got the idea from gypsies in Czechoslovakia) but my GF said it was antisocial
antisocial
And nature unfriendly
Inkognito wrote:
It certainly looks dramatic.
The thing is, when the emergency services are summoned there is usually very little information available to them and they have to decide what to deploy before they really know what’s happened.
In this instance they will have been told ‘aircraft crash’ and they’ve no way of knowing whether it’s something like this or more akin to the Hunter crash.
It’s probably better to have too many turn up and go away again than to just send 1 guy in a car when it turns out to be a big smash.
Indeed. The general public are not going to be experts when they report a plane crash. We had such an incident in a glider club trip to Aboyne: one of our club members landed in a field, and (judging by the lady’s accent, and her not being used to seeing gliders land in nearby fields on a semi-regular basis) a new resident saw the glider low down and disappear behind the trees, and reported a plane crash.
A horde of Police and emergency workers showed up, the police officers even waded through a very cold Scottish burn to get to the site, where they found a perfectly uncrashed and intact glider and our completely unharmed club member waiting for the glider trailer to arrive. Without any context, they really don’t know what’s happened so it’s best to send in the cavalry. Out of anything better to do, they breathalyzed our club pilot! They also helped us load the glider into the trailer, so their presence was appreciated after all.
Oh yeah, as an emergency physician I can tell you a lot of these stories where you get dispatched with very limited information based on what the public reported and then the situation on-scene turns out wholly different.
Plane crashes are very rare and the dispatcher will assume the worst as a caution, they might have manuals which say that a light aircraft can hold four to six people, so might dispatch all the vehicles necessary to treat as many wounded before receiving better information. One can always terminate an emergency vehicles mission later on, but the initial delay can – medically speaking – sometimes not be made up, ever. So caution rules.