Light aircraft lands on the A40

[Muddle238]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestersh...

Very lucky that no injuries occurred, given how most drivers seem to surprised by the presence of other drivers coming towards them, let alone a light aircraft!

[Sixpackpert]

A very busy piece of road that, especially at that time.

Oddly the airport runs right next to it so I’m surprised they couldn’t put it down there!

[Starfighter]

The pilot did get it down on the centreline.

[aeropilot]

Sixpackpert said:

Oddly the airport runs right next to it so I’m surprised they couldn’t put it down there!

Pilot was almost certainly trying to get to runway 04 I would think before running out of options.....might have been keeping over line of A40 giving the bail out option between the built up areas of a direct approach to 04?

[GCH]

Sixpackpert said:

Oddly the airport runs right next to it so I’m surprised they couldn’t put it down there!

Quite...
The red X is the location of where it landed, between the laybys.


Be interesting to see what the problem was, and which approach they made.

[CoolHands]

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

[Cold]

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

Well said Prime Minister.

[ScotHill]

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

Is it any different to a car breaking down on the south circular?

[NDA]

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

Perhaps he saved the lives of his passengers?

[vikingaero]

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

Many of those small airfields/planes provide the pilots of the future, to fly you for work, to your holiday destination. or bringing in cargo, medicines, avocados and almonds for your morning skinny mocha-choca-woka-latte.

[Derek Smith]

vikingaero said:

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

Many of those small airfields/planes provide the pilots of the future, to fly you for work, to your holiday destination. or bringing in cargo, medicines, avocados and almonds for your morning skinny mocha-choca-woka-latte.

He could be practicing for a budget airline, getting as near to the airport as they could be bothered to.

The point is a valid one, I think, although I'm not blaming or criticising the pilot. But one small glitch can cause chaos. Life is on the edge. How one incident out of the norm can cause massive problems. We have no plan B.

[Camoradi]

The pilot was lucky to get out alive. If he'd come down a couple of miles away in Hucclecote they be calling Silvester and Arnie out of retirement to send in a crack rescue team.

[TheJimi]

GCH said:

Sixpackpert said:

Oddly the airport runs right next to it so I’m surprised they couldn’t put it down there!

Quite...
The red X is the location of where it landed, between the laybys.


Be interesting to see what the problem was, and which approach they made.

"quite"

Looking at it critically, if the airport runway is that close to the road where the plane eventually landed, I think it's a fairly safe bet that whatever happened, meant that the opportunity wasn't there to put it down on the airport runway.

Pilots don't tend to want to land on a road when there's a perfectly good runway adjacent.

[Ari]

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

Yes. So?

[TheJimi]

CoolHands said:

How 1 man can inconvenience thousands of people.

(sigh)

[vikingaero]

The road was only closed for 2 hours according to that article. What is it was an HGV fire? That would probably have resulted in an overnight closure as the road would need to be resurfaced? Do we therefore ban all HGVs?

[rohrl]

BBC News said:

…the plane was flying to Staverton, where it is normally based, and the airport closed as a result of the incident.

Why would you close the airport, where the plane wasn’t because it was on the A40?

[Fundoreen]

Was he heading in the right direction? We dont need no wrong way driver causes havok headlines.

[Eric Mc]

rohrl said:

Why would you close the airport, where the plane wasn’t because it was on the A40?

Perhaps the airport emergency services had gone to the scene of the accident (as would be expected) leaving the airport itself without cover.

[Hill92]

rohrl said:

BBC News said:

…the plane was flying to Staverton, where it is normally based, and the airport closed as a result of the incident.

Why would you close the airport, where the plane wasn’t because it was on the A40?

It's a licensed airfield so it's required to maintain a minimum level of Rescue and Fire Fighting Service cover (RFFS) cover to be open. If they deployed off airfield (as they can and do to support the local fire brigade in circumstances like this) then the airfield may have fallen below the minimum cover.

Reportedly there was also an unrelated incident on the airfield around the same time involving a gyrocopter colliding with a parked aircraft during power checks (i.e. brakes didn't hold).

Air Traffic Control may Laos have stood down the controller at the time pending post incident debrief.