An elderly pilot cheated death after crash-landing his plane at Fife Airport earlier this year.
Air accident investigators revealed that the 76-year-old who is understood to be an experienced flier managed to walk away from the wreckage of his Pulsar XP single-engine plane in April, despite an engine fault that could have resulted in a tragic outcome.
A report into the incident by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has confirmed that the pilot who has not been named in the report and is not thought to be from Fife had tried to land the small private plane on two occasions but experienced difficulty in slowing the aircraft down.
On his third attempt, the plane inexplicably sped up before crashing on the grass to the left of the runway near Glenrothes, causing the plane’s propeller blades to break off and resulting in extensive damage to the fuselage around the cockpit.
The pilot suffered only minor injuries and was able to free himself from the lap and shoulder harness before exiting the cockpit.
The AAIB report into the incident has cleared the pilot of any wrongdoing, although it highlighted he had acknowledged he had not considered turning the engine off for landing after realising there were problems with it.
“The takeoff and climb were normal but, on downwind, the pilot could not reduce the rpm below 3,500rpm, and consequently had difficulty slowing the aircraft,” it noted.
“On the approach, the pilot attempted to slow down by raising the nose above the horizon. The speed, however, remained too fast for a landing so the pilot decided to go around.
“The second approach was equally fast during the approach, and the pilot applied the same nose-high technique to reduce speed, noticing that the rpm was still about 3,500 with the throttle pulled fully back.
“For the third approach, still fast and nose-high, the pilot aimed to touch down on the numbers in order to have all the runway to bring the aircraft to a stop.
“As the pilot tried to flare and reduce power, the engine instead went to full power, causing the aircraft to yaw violently to the left.
“A further attempt by the pilot to reduce power resulted in the nose dropping and the aircraft impacting the ground on the grass to the left of the runway.”
The report added that a subsequent inspection of the engine and throttle discovered a problem with the plane that stopped the throttle which sets the desired power level from closing fully.