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Canadian Air Force pilot Capt. Brian Bews experienced a breakdown while flying into Lethbridge County Airport in Lethbridge, Alberta. He safely ejected from his CF-18 Hornet immediately before it impacted on the ground. MSNBC has a set of amazing photos from the incident.
Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Ian Martens / Lethbridge Herald / CP via AP
Ken and Carol Marcoux of Boulder, Colorado were parked on the side of a road to watch planes take off from the local airport. They saw a small plane approach, buffeted by the wind.
To the couple’s horror, the plane — whose pilot was later identified as Joe Curtis, 67, of Commerce City — was pointed right at their car and approaching at what Marcoux estimated was 100 mph. Carol Marcoux screamed “Ken!” and her husband stepped on the gas, moving the Prius forward just enough to spare them a potentially fatal hit.
Carol Marcoux said she heard “a big sound of glass breaking” as the right wingtip of the plane slammed into the back of the car — shattering the rear passenger window and denting the rear quarter panel — just inches behind her head.
The plane stopped in a field. Pilot Joe Curtis grabbed a mysterious bag, jumped out, and ran toward the airport! Curtis contacted the FAA about the accident hours later. Link
(image credit: Marty Caivano)
The US Airways Airbus 320 that landed in the Hudson River just a year ago is for sale. In the story known as “Miracle on the Hudson”, Captain Sully Sullenberger brought the plane down with no loss of life only 23 minutes into the flight when a flock of geese jammed the engines. Now the insurance company is selling what’s left of the plane.
The auction — “As Is/Where Is (New Jersey),” Chartis Insurance Group is compelled to disclose — does not include the airliner’s engines or avionics, and the lot is somewhat in pieces. But apart from that it seems to be surprisingly intact for a craft that hit the water at a normal touchdown speed with ad hoc landing gear comprising the entire fuselage and wings — which, by the way supported all 155 people aboard as they safely deplaned and awaited rescue craft on the frigid Hudson.
The offering page is remarkably bland, not even considering the high drama surrounding the most famous water landing ever. Under the formal description of the accident, it says: “Aircraft suffered severe bird strike event resulting in water emergency landing.” The description of the damage is simple: “Severe water damage throughout airframe. Impact damage to underside of aircraft.”
The craft itself is described as “1999 AIRBUS A320-214? and nowhere on the page is even the most oblique mention of the significance of this particular piece of aviation salvage.
Bids are being accepted through March 27. Link
(image credit: Janis Krum)
In 1971, Juliane Koepcke was the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed 91 people over Peru. She fell two miles and landed in the rain forest. The 17-year-old Koepcke then walked for ten days through jungle terrain to find help.
As she travelled downstream, Koepcke discovered more wreckage from the plane — and found some of the crash victims.
“I found another row of seats with three dead women still strapped in. They had landed head-first and the impact must have been so hard that they were buried almost two feet into the ground.
“I was horrified — I didn’t want to touch them but I wanted to make sure that my mother wasn’t one of them. So I took a stick and knocked a shoe off one of the bodies. The toe nails had nail polish on them and I knew it could not have been my mother because she never used nail polish.”
Juliane continued through the rainforest, wading through jungle streams infested with crocodiles, piranhas and devil rays.
Koepcke is now a librarian in Munich. Read the whole story and see a video interview at CNN. Link -via reddit
