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RAF Fighter Guides Stricken Plane to Safety

Posted on: Thursday, 30 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Eben Harrell

A FIGHTER jet guided a civilian aircraft to safety when the plane got into difficulty over Glasgow, the RAF said yesterday.

The aircraft, a Beechcraft Super King carrying a pilot and two passengers, lost all its electronic instrument systems apart from the altimeter as it approached Glasgow Airport on Tuesday morning.

The Tornado F3 crew were on a routine training mission in the Lake District when they were called to help. The jet guided the troubled craft first to Prestwick then Edinburgh airports, but thick cloud caused two aborted attempts at landing.

The plane landed safely more than an hour later at RAF Leuchars in Fife.

Flight Lieutenant Ted Threapleton, 54, the Tornado pilot, said: "We knew we could help because we had more fuel than usual on board. It wasn't long before we picked him up on our radar."

The Tornado crew drew alongside and slightly ahead of the plane and gave the recognised greeting of rocking their wings.

At first, they thought the pilot had only lost his communications systems, but he had actually lost most of his management systems and had no way of knowing his speed or position.

This made descending very dangerous, as flying through clouds without electronic help can cause pilots to become disorientated and inadvertently enter a spin. Flt Lt Threapleton said: "We knew that he would have problems descending because he had no way of knowing where he was, so we wanted to keep in contact with him."

The RAF crew used hand signals as they guided the plane to safety, but the Beechlight flies at a much slower speed than the Tornado, making the operation more difficult.

Flt Lt Threapleton said: "There was probably nobody else who could have helped because civilian aircraft don't have all the radars, radios and tracking equipment we do. We are also trained to fly in formation and do this type of shepherding.

"We both knew that if we didn't get the plane below cloud, he would eventually have run out of fuel and crashed. There was no other option."

Meanwhile, a Ryanair passenger jet landed at the wrong airport in Northern Ireland yesterday after the pilot mistook Ballykelly military airfield near Londonderry for the City of Derry airport.

The pilot was cleared by air traffic control at City of Derry for a visual approach but then chose the wrong airport at which to land. It is understood that 39 passengers from Liverpool disembarked normally and were taken by coach to the right airport.

A airline spokesman said: "Ryanair has notified both the IAA and CAA of this error. We have also asked Eirjet, the operator of the aircraft, to carry out a full investigation, as in over seven years of Ryanair flights into City of Derry airport, and over 20 years of Ryanair operated flights, such a mistake has never occurred before."

Source: Scotsman, The

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