Solo Pilot Goes Blind During Flight But Still Manages To Land Plane Safely
Posted November 10, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It’s a remarkable tale of grace under fire and tragedy averted – and it all belongs in the hands of two men who wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of survival.
The story of what happened to Jim O’Neill began last week in mid-air, in a Cessna flying from Scotland to southeastern England. Everything was normal about the flight and the plane was working perfectly. And then it all changed suddenly and without warning for the veteran pilot about 40 minutes into his solo journey.
The 65-year-old had a stroke as the craft hovered 5,500 feet in the air and the effects of it completely robbed him of his sight. At first, O’Neill believed he’d simply been blinded by ‘dazzling’ sunlight, but when his vision didn’t return, he knew he was in trouble, all alone at the controls with no one to take over.
“It was terrifying,” the BBC quotes him as saying. “Suddenly, I couldn’t see the dials in front of me.”
Panicked, O’Neill somehow groped and found the radio, relaying his plight to those on the ground. His plea was picked up by an RAF Wing Commander who had just finished his own training flight nearby. Paul Gerrard took off and located the plane, flying close beside it and radioing directions to the stricken pilot inside.
He eventually guided him to the closest landing strip, which created another difficult dilemma – how to get him safely to the ground.
O’Neill first hit the runway but bounced up again. The same thing happened on the second attempt. But on the third try, the blind flyer managed to make a nearly perfect landing as his co-pilot in the second plane talked him through it.
“Landing an aircraft literally blind needs someone to be right there to say ‘Left a bit, right a bit, stop, down,'” Gerrard points out. “On the crucial final approach, even with radar assistance, you need to take over visually. That’s when having a fellow pilot there was so important.”
O’Neill was taken to hospital, where his sight has slowy started to return.
“It’s one of those things you might hear about happening in some sort of all-action film but it’s hard to believe what they did,” his son, Douglas, agrees. He’s grateful to the incredible grace under fire of the Royal Air Force, who prevented disaster and saved his father’s life. “They were just tremendous.”
The BBC has the audio of this amazing talk-down. Click here to see their story and hear the surprisingly calm minute-by-minute landing.
Cessna file photo courtesy Wikipedia
