aircraft & fire firegeezer on 30 Mar 2008 12:12 pm
Plane Crashes Into UK House
Updated, scroll down.
A CESSNA CITATION JET AIRCRAFT CRASHED INTO A HOUSE in the Southeast corner of England at 2:30 Sunday afternoon.
The plane was carrying two the pilot and three four passengers and went into a dive after the pilot had called in a Mayday to the nearby airfield’s control tower.
Another pilot who was approaching the runway on his landing when the event happened told the BBC:
“I was about thirty seconds from touchdown and I heard a mayday call.
“(The pilot) reported severe engine vibrations. You could hear the alarms in the cockpit. The pilot came back over the radio a second or two later and said ‘We’re going down, we’re going down’.
“The radio stayed live, and as I turned off the runway I looked back and I saw the plane basically drop out of the sky. And then the radio went dead and black smoke came up from over the hill.”
The plane crashed into a duplex house. The people living in the one directly impacted are thought to have been away at the time and the residents of the adjoining home escaped without injury. All of the plane’s occupants are believed to have perished.
Jason Morell, a nearby resident, told Sky News:”It was at such a low level I could see the people sitting on the plane panicking at the windows. I ran outside because my two young girls were out there playing … the woman next door was hysterical. Her father had collapsed. We managed to drag him away from the scene. The plane was that close you could see the panic on their faces.”
The BBC report is HERE.
The Guardian has a REPORT.
Click to play this VIDEO of aerial news footage at the crash scene
Update, Monday am:
It is now being reported that the plane had just taken off from the nearby airport and the pilot had called in his Mayday along with a request to return for the emergency landing. It appears that he was attempting to miss the houses and put the plane into the stand of trees just beyond the impact point.
Reuters is reporting that the pilot was Mike Roberts, of Effingham, Surrey, who was said to be a director of Flight Consultancy Services, based at Biggin Hill. Two of the four passengers were noted auto racing personalities, David Leslie, 54, and Richard Lloyd, 63, the boss of Apex Motorsport.
Leslie was a former prominent touring car racer and a commentator on the Eurosport television network. Lloyd was a former British Saloon Car champion who was part of a three-man team that came second in the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race in 1985.


