Passenger lands plane after pilot falls ill at controls
LONDON: A passenger with almost no flying experience landed a light aircraft after being talked down by an instructor on the ground when the pilot fell ill at the controls mid-air, a British airport said on Wednesday.
The two men, who had been enjoying a day’s flying, were in a four-seater Cessna 172 when the pilot, who later died, became unwell as they headed back to the small Sandtoft airfield near Doncaster in northeast England yesterday evening.
Having received a mayday message, a decision was made to divert the plane to the larger Humberside Airport nearby where a flying instructor was called in and emergency services alerted, a spokesman for the airport said.
Instructor Roy Murray was taken to the control tower and he gave instructions to the passenger, whose name was only given as John.
“You can imagine it was getting dark, this guy’s had about half an hour experience of flying an aircraft, he’s never landed one, he’s sitting in the wrong seat – in other words he hasn’t got any of the dials in front of him and he has to land this thing,” the spokesman said.
After flying over the airport a couple of times, the passenger was able to bring the plane down.
“It didn’t crash. He landed it safely,” the spokesman said.
Murray said the man had made a “beautiful landing”.
“I kept watching him and saying keep pulling back, pulling back, pull the levers back, whatever you can see, pull back and just hold it back, because if you land with a nose wheel down you can take the nose wheel off and then you’ve got all sorts of problems,” he told BBC TV.
“He kept pulling back, doing as I was telling him to do, until he came to a stop.”
Police said an inquest would be held to determine the cause of death of the pilot, who has not yet been named. (Reuters)
Brazil doctors amputate the wrong leg of a patient
Rio De Janeiro: A Brazilian hospital says a patient with diabetic kidney failure has been left legless after going into an operation to amputate his right leg and having doctors remove his left.
Marilda Santos is the spokesperson for Rio de Janeiro’s Pedro Ernesto University Hospital. She says that on Friday doctors were supposed to amputate the right leg of Antonio Cesar Victorio but instead they removed his left leg.
“When the patient’s daughter told doctors they had removed the wrong leg, they amputated the other leg as well.” She says the hospital is trying to determine if doctors committed a medical error or if they “removed the left leg because it too was compromised by the patient’s disease.”
Victorio’s daughter told the O Globo newspaper that the family plans to sue. (AP)
New DNA tests say head isn’t French King Henri IV
London: Three years ago, French researchers declared that a centuries-old mummified head was that of the beloved King Henri IV.
But now a new study says, “Non!” The original conclusion was based largely on facial reconstruction techniques and signs the skull had injuries similar to those suffered by the monarch.
The new study looked at DNA instead. It found a genetic mismatch between the head and three living male relatives of the 17th-century French king. The researchers concluded the head didn’t come from anybody in the royal lineage.
Henri IV was one of France’s best-loved kings, credited with bringing religious peace to the country and building Parisian landmarks like the Pont Neuf bridge during his reign from 1589 to 1610.
He was the first of the Bourbon monarchs and grandfather of the Sun King Louis XIV. It’s “impossible” that the head belongs to Henri IV, said Jean-Jacques Cassiman, an emeritus professor at the University of Leuven, one of the authors of the new study.
The research was published online today in the European Journal of Human Genetics. The same study also found a blood sample previously attributed to King Louis XVI, one of Henri’s descendants, lacked any royal ties. Louis XVI died on the guillotine during the French Revolution and many spectators reportedly soaked their handkerchiefs in the king’s blood. (AP)
Couple forgets son sleeping in cab in hurry to catch flight
Dubai: A couple, in their rush to catch a flight, forgot their five-year-old sleeping son in a taxi at the Dubai airport. The boy was reunited with his family last week after two tense hours, following coordination between the Dubai Police and the taxi driver.
The family reached the Terminal 2 of Dubai International Airport in a taxi and were in a hurry to catch a flight, Major-General Khalil Ibrahim Al Mansouri, director-general, department of criminal investigation was quoted as saying by the Khaleej Times on Tuesday.
While they were busy taking the bags from the taxi’s boot and moving into the departure hall with the trolley to finalise their travel procedures, they forgot that their son was left behind in the car, he said.
The couple, whose nationality was not made known, realised their child was missing only at the boarding pass counter and approached the airport security police in panic. The officers identified the taxi through the CCTV footage, following which the taxi was tracked down. The cab driver did not notice that the child was still in the back seat when he dropped the family at the airport and left.
He returned to the airport in two hours with the boy, who was still sleeping, the report said. The boy was then handed over to his father. (PTI)
Two-tailed dinosaur-era bird uncovered
Beijing: Scientists have uncovered an ancient dinosaur-era bird with two tails, which lived in modern-day China about 120 million years ago.
Researchers determined that previously found bird fossils show that Jeholornis had two tails.
They describe their study of the fossils and the dual tails – one long with feathers near the end, the other short and more useful for flying, ‘Phys.org’ reported.
The fossil specimens were part of a large group of fossils found in a part of China known as Jehol – most of which were of different types of birds.
Jeholornis was previously thought to have just one long ornamental tail.
This new study indicates that another was present also, situated much closer to the spine and very likely useful as an aid in flight. Earlier efforts had led to finding 11 fossil specimens that had been identified as Jeholornis – four of them had feather and bone remains that showed the bird had a long tail with just a few feathers near the tip and also another tail that was much more like those of modern birds – a frond useful for steering while in flight.
The team noted that some of the other fossils did not appear to have both tails, suggesting that one of tails, likely the long ornamental one, existed in just one gender. (PTI)
