‘My sister Heather’s survival is miraculous’
“It is almost miraculous. No less. I can’t explain it,” Heather Elliot’s brother, David Peare, said.
And he said he got a sense from his sister that Thursday’s accident, which claimed the lives of six people, was “needless”.
Ms Elliot, 53, a married mother-of-three originally from Kinsale in Co Cork, but now living in Belfast, was one of 10 passengers on board the Manx2 commuter flight from Belfast to Cork last Thursday morning. She was seated near the wing of the aircraft.
She was on her way to Cork to visit her 84-year-old mother Roma and had told her not to come to meet her at the airport as normal — that she would catch a bus to Kinsale. But her life was to be turned upside down at 9.52am.
Ms Elliot was among six survivors when the 1992 US-built, Spanish-registered Fairchild Metroliner twin-turbo prop aircraft crashed on its third attempt to land in dense fog.
Its right wing-tip struck the runway and it flipped onto its roof.
The Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner, registration EC-ITP, owned by Barcelona-based Flightline BCN, and which had been serviced in Spain just two weeks ago, slid inverted for 190 metres before coming to a rest near taxiway C.
Six people, including the pilot and co-pilot, were killed. All were seated in the front of the plane which was crushed by the impact.
They were named officially by gardaí on Saturday as pilot and captain, Jordi Sola Lopez, 31, from Manresa, Barcelona; his co-pilot Andrew John Cantle, 27, from Sunderland; Patrick Gerard Cullinan, 45, from the Malone Road, Belfast; Brendan McAleese, 39, from Kells, Co Antrim; Richard Kenneth Noble, 48, from Jordanstown, Belfast; and Joseph Michael Evans, 51, from Belfast.
Peter Cowley, 31, from Glanmire, Co Cork, was the sole survivor from the front of the plane. It is understood he was sitting directly behind the pilot.
In his first interview since the crash, Ms Elliot’s brother, David, gave a remarkable insight into how Heather survived the crash and lay injured in mud which spewed into the upturned aircraft through its ripped roof; how she then feared burning to death; how her first thoughts turned to contacting her mother and her husband, Stephen; and how she was freed from the mangled wreckage, and became the first survivor to arrive at Cork University Hospital (CUH).
And he choked back tears as he thanked all those who were involved in the emergency response and rescue operation.
“I can’t say enough about the emergency services and the doctors, nurses and everybody involved,” he said, before visiting Heather in CUH on Saturday.
“Every little detail worked. Nobody shrugged off responsibility. Everybody just went and stuck to the plan.
“It’s because of that, we have such good news stories. If you’re going to be on the ball, you need to be practising things all the time. The one time they needed to do it, they did it exactly right. There is such good faith and such good support around.
“It would really lift you, especially when our country is in the proverbial and you see all these good people just working to save these six people. I’m so grateful. I know everybody was brilliant. I just can’t say how thankful I am for that.”
He said Heather realised there was fog at Cork Airport as the aircraft came in to land but she didn’t say much else about it.
“She did say it was probably needless that this happened,” he said.
“There needn’t have been a landing. There could have been something else. Nobody would have minded landing somewhere else.
“That’s what I think.
“There might have been other options. Now I don’t know, maybe there wasn’t, so that’s not fair to say, and maybe it had to be done.”
He said as the aircraft landed, Heather thought it was braking but described the accident as “so quick, so tremendous, it just flashed, over before she knew any more”.
As the aircraft flipped, and skidded upside down along the runway, and off onto a muddy grass verge, Mr Peare said Heather was thrown around the cabin.
He said she thought she had sunk into some part of the aircraft but had actually sunk into the mud which flowed into the cabin.
“She knew that moment she had survived,” he said.
“But the one thing that was running through her head now was that it was going to burst into flames, and that maybe now, she would burn to death. I think that was probably the hardest bit for her.”
The airport’s fire crews were on the scene within minutes and extinguished the blazing right engine, preventing it from spreading to the cockpit or cabin.
Mr Peare revealed that his mother was planning to collect Heather from the airport but Heather had told her to stay at home.
“In retrospect that was terrific because if my mother was up in the airport waiting, I really don’t know what would have happened,” he said.
Mr Peare’s wife Laura, who teaches in Grange, phoned him at work in Kinsale to say Heather’s flight had crashed. Canon David Williams then drove him to the airport, where they met Laura.
“I thought at that stage we were going for a different reason,” Mr Peare said.
“It was a very quiet car. I really thought I was going up there for a different job — to identify a body or at least see carnage.
“I was really in fear.”
He said he “turned inward” to draw strength, willing that everything would be OK.
“This was what was keeping me going, just hoping that Heather would be alright,” he said.
Airport staff told them Heather was in CUH and they drove there.
“From there on everybody — from the person making the coffee to the person taking our names — was so compassionate and so, so generous with their time,” he said.
“It’s very hard to believe so many people like that are still around. We can’t thank them enough. I know there are six families who weren’t as lucky as us, but we are one of the lucky ones –— we can’t take that for granted.”
He described the moment doctors allowed him to see Heather as “an unsurpassable moment” in his life.
“I could have hugged her to bits. I’m usually glad to see my sister but God, I was never this glad. It was an incredible moment for all of us,” he said.
Within two-and-a-half hours of the crash, Heather had spoken to her mother, and by 7pm, her husband Stephen and their two sons, David, 20 and Peter, 17, were at her bedside.
Her daughter Jennifer, 21, who lives in London, was making arrangements to get home.
“A full recovery looks like it’s on the way,” Mr Peare said. “I know because I know her that she will get over this.”
Ms Elliot of is one of four survivors still in CUH.
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