UK PILOT IN GLIDER TRAGEDY

Flight was 60th treat

A TOP British glider pilot was killed instantly when his aircraft slammed into a rocky hillside at 150mph.

Highly experienced Peter Reading was celebrating his 60th birthday with a solo flight over the plains of South Africa.

Mr Reading was on his ninth day of pleasure flights during a romantic gliding holiday with wife Ingrid when tragedy struck as he went up to fly alone. Father-of-two Peter, 60, of Godalming, Surrey, had been launched from an airfield in a Jonker JS-1 Revelation glider that is capable of speeds of up to 175mph in normal flight.

The Flybe airline captain got into difficulties as he tried to climb.

He is believed to have gone into a spin and was unable to pull up the nose before crashing into the hill.

The previous day he had taken Ingrid, 59, up in a two-seater glider for a flight over the wild African Karoo and South Africa’s biggest dam near Norvalspout in the Free State.

But on Monday he chose to fly alone with plans to celebrate his birthday and took off from the airfield next to the Gariep Dam after dawn.

Eyewitnesses said he got into difficulties shortly after takeoff. Ingrid was said by members of Gariep Dam Gliding Club to be “inconsolable”.

Club chairman Manni Voigt, 55, said: “Peter wanted to fly for as long as he could on his big day but tragically it wasn’t to be.”

An investigation into the crash has been launched.