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09th Oct 2013

Airline passenger with no prior experience praised for emergency landing

Ted Striker would be a very proud man.

JOE

Ted Striker would be a very proud man.

Humberside Police and Humberside National Airport in the UK have been fulsome in their praise of a passenger who made an emergency landing on a light aircraft yesterday when the pilot took ill, despite never having flown a plane before.

Incredibly the passenger managed to land the plane safely with the help of two instructors from the ground.

Some eyewitnesses described the landing as a little heavy, with sparks seen on the runway, but one of the instructors, Roy Murray, said the passenger did a “remarkable” job.

“I think without any sort of talk-down he would have just gone into the ground and that would have been the end of it,” he told the BBC.

The police have launched an investigation as to what caused the pilot to become incapacitated.

Of course it isn’t the first time we have seen some drastic action taken in mid-air and we have our suspicions that the passenger in question was inspired by the film Airplane! and the efforts of Ted Striker. He of course was a pilot, but had been out of the game for quite some time before he was called into an emergency landing of his own. Here is a little reminder.