Cleaner has lucky escape as ice falls under flight path

Calls for Civil Aviation Authority to investigate after latest incident on Heathrow approach

A BLOCK of ice that fell from the sky narrowly missing a pedestrian in a London suburb has led to calls for an investigation into debris from planes.

Serhiy Mysehkov, a street cleaner, was working under a flight path to Heathrow when a giant piece of ice crashed beside him.

It comes after ice, frozen urine and even the body of a stowaway have plummeted on to residential areas across Britain in recent years.

The latest incident has prompted calls for an investigation into the issue

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said that while it received reports of around 30 ice falls every year it was “unable to investigate the potential origin”. The near-miss next to Kew Gardens station, believed to have happened on Wednesday, was caught on CCTV which showed Mr Mysehkov crossing the road before the giant ice block smashed to the ground.

Amir Khan, 39, was driving past when he captured the drama on his dashboard security camera. “It was like the start of a disaster movie,” Mr Khan said. “It made such a loud noise like a meteorite crashing down. The street cleaner was so confused and scared.”

Monica Horner, a Kew councillor, called for the CAA to investigate the “worrying” incident. She said: “It definitely needs to be investigated, I’m shocked. This could have killed someone.” Ms Horner added: “This is the problem when you have planes going over a populated area, and another argument to say that Heathrow is the wrong place for expansion.”

Less than five months ago, a block of ice left a 4ft-wide crater in a back garden in Renfrewshire, while a piece of ice fell from a Heathrow-bound plane causing substantial damage to a roof in Windsor a year ago. A shop assistant in Essex was almost crushed by a lump of frozen urine that fell 33,000ft from a plane and landed at her feet in 2008, and another frozen ball of urine and excrement smashed through a couple’s roof in Wiltshire in 2015.

In the same year a suspected stowaway plunged to his death from a plane arriving from Johannesburg, South Africa, landing on offices in Richmond, and another stowaway died in a fall on a residential street in Mortlake in 2012.

A spokesman for the CAA said that while the ice block might have come from a plane, incidents such as this could also be as a result of meteorological phenomena. The spokesman added: “Ice falls from aircraft are considered to be rare in UK airspace. The CAA receives reports of around 30 ice falls every year. We are unable to investigate the potential origin of an ice fall, but do record reports of this nature.”

The CAA added that efforts are made to minimise the risk of ice falls by performing regular maintenance to prevent leaks and take prompt corrective action if a defect is found.