Hawker Hunter jet limped off runway on doomed flight
THE Hawker Hunter jet that crashed at the Shoreham air show appeared to struggle to take off on its doomed final flight, an aviation expert said yesterday.
Video of the vintage aircraft shows it getting off the ground just yards before the end of the runway.
One expert said the take-off by Andy Hill, the pilot, from North Weald airfield in Epping Forest, Essex, appeared to be slow. Within an hour, the former RAF pilot crashed into traffic on the A27 and claimed a suspected 11 lives.
Dr Stephen Wright, a lecturer at the University of Leeds, and a pilot himself, believes the slow take-off looked “unusual”. He said: “When a plane takes off you try to get it off as rapidly as possible. But it took a long time to get airborne.
“These types of plane normally go up and up like a missile but this one didn’t. I can’t give an explanation as I don’t have any data but it seems unusual.”
A witness, Erol Huseyin, 27, of Southgate, north London, took the footage of the take-off around midday on Saturday. He said: “It didn’t look right at all. I’m used to seeing planes take off halfway down the run way. You see it wants to lift off, the nose starts lifting, but it didn’t do anything. “It took off at the end of the runway, barely made it. It was few metres away from the end of the runway. It looked like it had no guts at all.”
Another video that emerged yesterday showed a bright flame spitting from the jet as it reached the top of its fatal loop-the-loop.
Julian Bray, an aviation analyst, said the plane may have suffered a “flameout”, causing the enging to cut out. “It would be enough to throw the plane out of alignment so the pilot would have to wrestle to get it back into the loop.”
Mr Hill, who has been placed in a coma by doctors, has been moved to a specialist hospital for treatment in a “critical but stable” condition, an NHS spokesman said last night. The spokesman did not reveal the location.
James Butcher, a councillor on Adur district council, asked why the pilot attempted to perform a loop-the-loop over a busy dual carriageway. Mr Butcher said he feared that safety was compromised to make money.
David Searle, 69, a former police officer, has repeatedly warned a disaster would happen at the airport, accusing it of having a a “gung-ho” attitude.
He told The Sun he had warned the Civil Aviation Authority and Air Accident Investigations Branch by sending at least 40 emails and letters since 2007 and left his home in Shoreham every time the air show was held.
An airport spokesman said a new company had taken over management in August 2013, after many of Mr Searle’s letters had been sent. She added: “The airport has never failed an audit.”
A 20-year-old driver has died in a head-on collision on the diversion around the crash site. The motorist was killed on the A280 in Findon at 6.30pm on Tuesday. A 34-year-old man in the other car suffered minor injuries.
‘It took off at the end of the runway, it barely made it ... It looked like it had no guts at all’