Hero tells of landing plane in the dark

A passenger who was forced to crash land a plane after the pilot was taken ill said he thought he was going to run into a wall as he struggled to reach the brakes to stop the aircraft.

John Wildey landed the plane at Humberside Airport, near Grimsby, north Lincolnshire, after being talked through it by a flight instructor.

The pilot, who has since died, had collapsed in the cockpit and Wildey — who had never even flown an aircraft before — was left to ground the Cessna 172.

Wildey required several attempts before finally touching down in the dark — with no lights.

“I’ve never flown a plane before,” he told BBC News. “Now I know you bring back the controls, but I didn’t bring them back hard enough, so really I was just sort of nose down rather than anything else.

“We touched and then there was a right bump — two or three bumps.

“I suppose it was a controlled crash really and then I just couldn’t get the brakes because I couldn’t reach them.”

Wildey said he began to veer off the runway as he was attempting to reach the brakes and could see a wall rapidly approaching.

“I thought ‘I ain’t going to do it’, but we managed to stop in the end,” he said.

The aircraft was heading back to base at Sandtoft airfield, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, at about 6.20pm on Tuesday when the mayday call came through.

Flight instructor Roy Murray, who guided Wildey through the manoeuvre, said he made a “beautiful landing”.

“I wouldn’t be frightened to fly with him.”

Murray said he was called at his home near Grimsby at 6.25pm and went to the tower at the airport, where the decision was taken to use the main runway which was “lit up like a Christmas tree” as it was getting dark.

“I took him round three times,” the instructor said, “which were reasonable but not good enough to land.

“Then, on the fourth, he made a nice landing.”

Murray said the atmos-phere in the tower was tense and there were handshakes but no cheers when the plane touched down.

The plane is understood to have undergone only minor damage to its wheel.

Airport commercial director Paul Litten expressed his condolences to the family of the man who died.

Debbie Zost, operations managers at the airport in charge of air traffic control, said an investigation was under way.