Praise for quick-thinking garden plane crash pilot

The small plane crashed into a back garden but a more "severe outcome" was avoided, said investigators

A pilot whose small plane crashed into the back garden of a house has been praised for avoiding a more "severe outcome".

Residents in Bodffordd, Anglesey, watched the plane fall from the sky "like a brick" on a Saturday afternoon in February.

The 50-year-old pilot suffered a broken wrist and minor head injury and was taken to hospital by air ambulance.

Investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch found the plane lost power shortly after taking off from RAF Mona, but the cause of the engine failure has not been established.

Eyewitness Rees Roberts, who was working in a nearby field at the time, said he saw the "black and yellow bumblebee aeroplane" flying lower than he would expect.

"Sometimes they try the engines, but I noticed it and all of a sudden it cut off completely and just fell like a brick," he said.

"So I jumped in the car and I was one of the first here and it had fallen in cypress trees which had broken the fall descent."

As the Aerosport Scamp aircraft lost power, the pilot quickly realised he would not be able to land the plane back at the airfield and looked for somewhere suitable, investigators said.

"With a residential area ahead and a high rate of descent, he picked an open area of gardens with a line of trees to land in and intentionally stalled the aircraft into the tree line.

"The pilot’s prompt recognition and response to the aircraft’s stall allowed for a greater degree of control over the aircraft’s flight path and time to decide where to land, which probably contributed to a less severe outcome than might have otherwise occurred."

The pilot's training as a commercial pilot "assisted his quick reaction" which "probably prevented a more serious accident", said investigators.

He suggested the loss of engine power before the crash on the afternoon of 10 February may have been due to carburettor icing, said the report.

However, an examination of the wreckage found the engine in working order. The plane had also recently undergone a major restoration.

"The cause of the engine failure was not determined," the report concluded.

"Contributory factors to the resulting accident were a challenging decision making process due to the partial power loss and proximity to the ground, and the pilot’s inexperience with the relatively high-drag, low-inertia aircraft type."