PLANE FLIES FOR TWO HOURS WITH WING MISSING

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PLANE FLIES FOR TWO HOURS WITH WING MISSING:

August 19, 2005

A Dozy pilot flew his plane for two hours before he noticed that five-and-a-half feet of one wing had been torn off by a tree on take-off. The Irish pilot told investigators he thought he had been "struck by a little bird" on takeoff in his five-seater Cessna 210.

But despite two of the three passengers being top flight engineers on their way to fix a Boeing 767, no one noticed that half the left wing, containing one fuel tank, was missing. The unnamed pilot was forced to make an emergency landing at Jersey International Airport two hours later after he finally spotted the fuel gauge plummeting towards empty.

The drama unfolded as the Cessna took off from Brittas House Airstrip, 18 miles east of Shannon in Ireland last Friday.

As the small aircraft - bound for Lisbon in Portugal - left the runway it collided with treetops which ripped off a 5ft 7ins section of the left wing. The fuel tank was later found on the ground - back in Ireland.

Jersey International Airport was alerted and air traffic controllers guided the damaged plane to safety.

A spokesman for the airport said: "We were amazed it had managed to fly as long as it had, it was in a real state when it came in.

"The pilot was the most shocked of us all as he had not realised the extent of the damage while he was flying."



Cheers,

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Information & picture from WWW.StrangeDangers.com

[Hagar]

Already been posted. Check out the "Luck of the Irish" thread. http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=genav;action=display;num=1124479572

That's a better photo though.

[C]

A) Does he not conduct a lookout, during which he may have noticed part of his airframe was missing.

I hope he gets charged with negligence, particularly if he thought he had a birdstrike on take off - did he not think to check for damage?

[looie]

i thought id sin this b4 in these forums

[looie]

and "theysellcoke" wer did u get ur signature

[Irfanfaiz]

Huh? An aircraft would crash if one of it's wings is missing. Maybe the cessena have a capibility to fly with a wing missing more than an hour. I'm still new in this forum and i still don't know people in this forum.


Irfan

[Ivan]

It has a wingtip mod... so its a little longer wing than usual for that type

[Saitek]

Wow! Incredible!

[Hagar]

In case you didn't check out my link.

The pilot later said he heard a bang but thought he had just his a small bird. He only realised what had happened when he spotted his back-up fuel tank gauge was on empty as he flew over the Channel on the way to Portugal.

I assume this "back-up fuel tank" is the Flint Aero type extended wingtip tank. This is what it looks like.


I think half a wing is a slight exaggeration.

[Scorpiоn]

More like half a wingtip.  If CFS2 is any indication, you can fly just fine without wingtips, albiet the controls will be quite sluggish, and banking's a risky prospect.

When I first read the title I thought some guy had flown with a wing completely gone from the root.

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When I first read the title I thought some guy had flown with a wing completely gone from the root.

Thats what I thought, 'PLANE FLIES FOR TWO HOURS WITH WING MISSING' was the title I read on a non aviation site. I should've changed it really, because the title is in fact utter bo*****s

Oh well, too late now.

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[Hagar]

Seems I was wrong about that tip tank. Now someone please explain to me how this was not obvious from the cockpit.
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/905665/L/

Not sure how true it is but guess where the pilot comes from? http://www.avweb.com/newswire/11_34a/briefs/190422-1.html

The unnamed pilot, from a community called Dozy (we couldn't make that up),