Hero? I was just ho
In 70 minutes of terror after pilot collapses, grandad with no flying experience steers plane to safety
A GRANDFATHER with no flying experience managed to land a light aircraft after the pilot collapsed at the controls.
With his friend dying beside him, John Wildey, 77, flew solo for 70 minutes as he was talked down by an instructor.
They told him to ignore most of the plane’s instruments and concentrate on using the joystick to keep its nose up. An RAF helicopter acted as an escort.
After three abortive attempts, Mr Wildey made an ‘almost perfect’ landing in semi-darkness – and bashfully denied being a hero, saying his actions were ‘nothing really – I was just holding the joystick’. The pilot was taken to hospital but died later.
The drama occurred after Mr Wildey – who served as a clerk in the RAF for 24 years but had never piloted a plane – and his friend had spent the day flying, as they had done many times before.
They took off from Sandtoft Airfield, between Scunthorpe and Doncaster, in glorious sunshine on Tuesday morning and flew the Cessna 172 Skyhawk to Skegness, on the Lincolnshire coast, with a stop at a small airfield for lunch.
They were due to return to Sandtoft shortly before 7pm.
But at about 6.15pm, the pilot – whose name has not been released – fell seriously ill and began drifting in and out of consciousness.
‘He said he was sick and asked me to take care of the aircraft controls,’ Mr Wildey said.
‘He set the controls and put me on the right path. Then he was unwell again, completely unresponsive. I called his name but he didn’t answer. I said we were going to have to land soon but when he didn’t respond.’
The Cessna 172 has dual controls, so Mr Wildey steadied the aircraft to the best of his abilities. He was wearing a headset linked to the plane’s radio and raised the alarm.
‘I called “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” but forgot to give the registration of the plane,’ he said.
‘I said, “I’ve got no flying experience and the pilot isn’t very well”. I said he couldn’t control the aircraft. I said that I thought I was heading to Sandtoft. They said they were still trying to sort out what they could do for me.
‘They asked if I could circle round Sandtoft. I said I would try my best. I circled around Sandtoft a
‘It was a controlled crash really’
few times. The pilot was still conscious but clearly incapable of flying the plane.
‘I kept knocking him to try to get him to do something because I hadn’t a clue how to get down,’ Mr Wildey said. He had watched his friend bank, climb and descend using the steering column, and had a notion of what some of the baffling array of dials and instruments in front of him did.
He was put through to the tower at Humberside International Airport, which has a longer landing strip and full emergency services, and told to await instructions.
Flights to and from Humberside were suspended or diverted as the runway was cleared for an emergency landing. A Sea King helicopter was scrambled from RAF Leconfield in East Yorkshire to fly alongside the Cessna to guide Mr Wildey on the 25mile flight.
Roy Murray, chief instructor at the airport’s Frank Morgan Flying School was called at his home in the Waltham, Lincolnshire.
He was told that a pilot had passed out and a passenger with no flying experience would need to be talked down.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr Murray pulled up at the airport’s air traffic control tower and was taken straight to the radar room.
‘ The atmosphere was all calm, nobody was panicking and it was all very professional,’ he said. He spoke to Mr Wildey, who was calm despite his predicament.
‘I told him to keep calm and not to over-control the aircraft,’ he said.
Mr Murray decided that the best option available was to guide Mr Wildey in with a ‘ blind landing’, in which he was told to ignore the bulk of the instruments, and use just three main controls: the throttle to lower the plane, the steering column to keep its nose up – and the brakes to slow the plane down if and when he touched down successfully.
‘All cockpits and controls are different and I didn’t want John looking around and panicking. It was tense at times, especially the last mile or so, as he was talked in.’
At around 7pm, as it was getting dark, Mr Wildey, who had been following the Sea King helicopter, came into view of the control tower.
Because the Cessna had been flying during the day he had no lights on outside or inside the cockpit.
All Mr Murray could see was the outline of the plane against an darkening sky.
As he explained how the plane worked and how Mr Wildey should land it, he stressed the need to keep the nose up when touching down to avoid smashing off the front landing wheel. In a calm voice, he went on to impress on the novice pilot the need to steer the vehicle when braking, in case it veered off to one side and struck a landing light.
‘If he had hit one the landing lights there could be a fuel leak with the risk of fire,’ Mr Murray said.
‘Thankfully, he was doing what I was telling him to do.’
On three nerve-racking occasions Mr Wildey tried to touch down, before pulling back on the steering column to lift the plane up again, increasing the throttle to avoid stalling and swinging round to make another attempt.
Each ‘go round’ was a terrifying experience for pilot and those on the ground. Mr Wildey said: ‘I could see the runway lights. They said, “bring her down gently, take the throttle