My son leapt from our doomed aircraft as it hurtled to earth... and saved both our lives
In the front of a crippled glider, 12-year-old Ruari Tait kept cool to follow the escape drill as his father struggled with canopy
THE white form of the aircraft loomed out of the haze in a heartbeat. Suddenly, it was just there – and heading straight towards them. In the front section of the cockpit, 12-year- old Ruari Tait mouthed the words ‘look at the glider’, but shock must have swallowed the sound – for his father Robert in the seat behind him heard nothing.
The 44- year- old i nstinctively rammed his control stick to one side and the glider began to bank. But it was much too late.
With a dull thud the two aircraft collided, knocking a chunk out of the single seater’s wing and shearing a 10ft section of wing off the two seater. For a split second, father and son sat suspended in the air, as if waiting to see what their glider would do next.
It pointed itself towards earth, then plummeted towards it in a vertical dive.
Neither one of the two doubted the craft was beyond saving. The only question was could they could save themselves – or were they plunging to their deaths in the Aberdeenshire countryside?
It was, in truth, on the touslehaired schoolboy in the front seat that the answer to that question hinged. For what father would save himself and let his son perish? Not Robert Tait. No, if Ruari was not getting out, then neither was his Dad.
Three weeks on, the Tait family home near Elgin, Moray, is not a place of mourning. Instead, there is laughter in the kitchen as young Ruari picks up a shard of what used to be a Grob 103 glider.
‘This is the nose cone,’ he says. ‘We’re thinking of having it mounted and keeping it as an ornament.’
There is more laughter as his father pulls his mobile phone from his pocket and demonstrates that it is none the worse for free-falling 4,000ft out of the sky. In fact, it even charted its own descent, revealing that, at one stage, it was falling at 75 knots, that is 86mph.
Not everything could be saved. On the way down, several credit cards and bank notes flew out of Mr Tait’s wallet which had been stuffed inside a pocket in the glider. The familyowned aircraft itself will cost £20,000 to replace.
But the only irreplaceable things – the pair’s lives – were saved by the remarkably quick wits and cool head of a 12-year-old.
‘There was just a big crash and then I think I started trying to get out,’ remembered Ruari. ‘I didn’t really think about it; I just did it.’
In the rear seat, his father, a gliding instructor, was shouting at his son, as loudly as he could: ‘Get out!’
He said: ‘At that stage, it was more a question of “had Ruari frozen or not?”. If he hadn’t opened his canopy I’d have stayed and shouted at him until I saw some sign of him actually getting out of the aircraft.
‘I knew he’d know how to get out, but the key thing was that I shouted at him to get out before I even started to open my canopy. Once the canopy was gone, he’d never have been able to hear me.’
Mr Tait was grimly aware that, in
‘No way pilot in the rear can assist anyone’
waiting for his son to respond to the peril, both could run out of time.
Fortunately for them both, the Gordonstoun junior school pupil had paid close attention on the dozens of occasions he had listened to his father give the safety drill for visitors to the Highland Gliding Club, just a few hundred yards from their home.
He knew, not just for training exercise purposes but also now that his life depended on it, that there were three things to do if he were to get out of this direst of predicaments
alive. First, reach for the emergency release which would detach the transparent plastic canopy above his head from the aircraft. Next, unstrap himself. And finally, once clear of the glider, pull the ripcord for the parachute on his back.
Simple, perhaps, in theory. But now their aircraft was in free fall. In a few seconds it would smash on the ground. Ruari did not freeze. He says: ‘I remember us going into the dive and thinking, “Oh no”, then trying to find the emergency release to get the canopy off. Then I tried to get it out before I undid my straps and realised they were still on, so I just unclipped them and it threw me out.’
Thinking back, it is the little details that Ruari remembers: his lips quivering with the G-force as the glider approached terminal velocity, the sudden silence as he was whipped clear of the glider into an independent free fall.
In the rear seat, there was, at least, one less worry for Mr Tait. His youngest son was baling out.
He says: ‘Ruari was clearly not waiting for my permission to get out.
‘That was a massive relief because there is no way the pilot in the rear section can assist anyone in the front. Even if there was time, there’s not enough space to lean forward or anything, so it’s got to be done by the person in front.’
Mr Tait admits his own exit was not as textbook as it might have been.
‘When something like this happens you resort to habits. I didn’t go for the emergency release. I went for the normal exit, which meant when I tried to get it open it was a lot stiffer, so my first attempt to open the canopy didn’t work and then I think I got a bit violent with it.’
Later, as the pair surveyed the wreckage, they found part of the rear canopy still attached to the aircraft. The emergency release is there for a reason. It removes both the canopy and its hinges in one, thus maximising the chances of escape. It was, ironically, the student – not the teacher – who got it right.
But the boy was struggling with his ripcord. ‘I remember tugging it once or twice but it only came half way out, not all the way out as it’s meant to. I wasn’t pulling hard enough.’
In the space of a few seconds, 4,000ft had become 2,000ft. There could only be a few seconds more.
Not for a moment did it enter the boy’s head he was going to die. He was too busy saving himself.
‘I was just focused on getting it open, that’s all I was thinking about,’ he says.
One more good tug and the death plunge was arrested. Floating now, he watched the aircraft he had exited moments earlier smash into trees and break apart. Around 500ft above him, he could see, the outline of his father – floating now too.‘I could see you quite easily,’ says the boy to his father with a grin as they recall their adventure. ‘You were the big fat blob in the sky!’
But Mr Tait could not yet see his son. ‘I didn’t see another parachute, so obviously my first concern was what had happened to Ruari. I was shouting for him as soon as my parachute opened and, as usual, the little blighter answered me back.’
It may have become a j oke between the two now. But the sound of the boy’s voice below surely provided the greatest relief of Mr Tait’s life.
‘It sounded like you were really angry,’ says the boy.
‘Well I was,’ replies his father. ‘You had broken my glider.’
More laughter – and, behind it, a shared understanding, perhaps, that humour may be the only way to react to what happened on September 1 – until each has processed it fully.
The mid-air collision had happened a few miles from Deeside
‘It’s a fantastic sport to develop young people’
Gliding Club near Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, moments before father and son were due to take part in a cross country race.
Mr Tait, a quality manager for an oilfield services company, has been around gliders all his life. It was his father Jim, 72, who encouraged the interest and, in turn, he has passed it to his sons Ian, 17, Douglas, 15, and Ruari.
It was through Highland Gliding Club that he met his wife Teresa.
The terrifying experience has done nothing to dampen their enthusiasm. Indeed, Ruari is aiming to be competent enough to fly solo at 14 – the earliest the law allows.
Mr Tait says: ‘I’ve been gliding for nearly 4,000 flights and flying solo for nearly 30 years and the closest I’ve ever come to another aircraft without seeing it would be 20 to 30 yards, but even then there was time to avoid it. The difference here was we were flying in opposite directions.
‘It was a hazy day and you have white gliders on a white background and the human eye doesn’t pick up an object as well when it is head on and, effectively, static. It’s spectacularly bad luck. Honestly, 6ft in any direction and we would have missed it.’
The collision wrote both gliders off – although the pilot in the other aircraft was able to bring it down for an emergency landing. Since there were no fatalities an investigation will be carried out by the British Glider Association – and neither Mr Tait nor the other glider pilot is expected to be blamed.
Remarkably, not one of the three involved in the collision has thought twice about returning to the skies.
‘I was out in a glider again last weekend. I’ve also been up in a plane at the airfield,’ says Ruari. ‘I just look at it as a million-to- one thing that happened. I thought back to what had happened a little bit, but not too much.’
His father says: ‘The only reason I didn’t fly the next day was my back was a bit sore. Ruari had quite a comfortable landing, like a dandelion hitting the ground. I came down more like a sack of potatoes off the back of a lorry. I was winded and bruised my ribs.’
Since the crash, he and the other pilot – a fellow member of Highland Gliding Club – have shared a joke together. A few days ago they took to the skies in the same aircraft.
Mr Tait says: ‘The odds of this collision happening were really small, so it doesn’t put me off.
‘It so happens that when Teresa picked us up from the hospital later that day and we drove back to the airfield we were nearly taken out by a biker and another car on the road – and it was as close as I’ve ever seen it.’
Ruari’s mother has a similar view. She says: ‘It was a heart-stopping moment when I was told that they had jumped out of the aircraft, but I’m very proud that he did and I wonder if others could have done the same. I’m very pleased that he got back into a glider as well.’
Do the couple not question the wisdom of involving their children in an adventure sport like gliding?
Mr Tait chooses his words carefully: ‘Any adventure sport comes with risks and once you accept those risks you do what you can to mitigate the factors you can control. Putting that aside it’s a fantastic sport for developing young people.
‘I don’t question it any more than having a road accident would make me question taking them in the car.
‘It’s part and parcel of life and I would much rather that all of my children understand how to identify and manage a particular risk but accept that life doesn’t come riskfree. If you try to have a risk-free life you are not going to really have much of a life.’
Beside him on the sofa, Ruari ruminates quietly. He belongs to a large family of gliders and, at 12, he has emerged unscathed from the worst accident any of them have known.
Onwards, then, and upwards.