Emergency landing at Ballybrit racecourse yesterday

palmtrees

Anyone else hear about this? According to the Oranmore Civil Defence facebook page, they responded to an emergency landing while they were at the racecourse. It was very foggy there yesterday anyway so flying conditions can't have been good. At least he'll have a runway plenty long to take off from!

Our crews were first on scene today when an aircraft made an emergency landing at Ballybrit racecourse.

We were covering another event at the racecourse when the Gardai alerted the ambulance crews to the fact that an aircraft was going to make a forced landing.

Thankfully nobody was injured in the landing and our crew assessed the pilot and passengers or injuries as a precaution. Two units of galway fire service were in attendance at the incident also.

Source: http://facebook.com/OranmoreCD

Lapin

Yesterday.

According the aviation forum.

Anyone see this happening ?

Fair play to the pilot for getting it down safely.
I imagine it was on the back straight as its the flattest part of the course.

D Trent

Fair play to the pilot? are you joking me sure he nearly took the Killanin Stand with him. Simply put, lives could have been lost.

Would like to take this opportunity to commend the swift response of the first personnel on scene, oranmore civil defence afaik

kraggy

D Trent wrote: »

Fair play to the pilot? are you joking me sure he nearly took the Killanin Stand with him. Simply put, lives could have been lost.

Would like to take this opportunity to commend the swift response of the first personnel on scene, oranmore civil defence afaik

The plane is miles away from the stand in the picture above.

D Trent

It was circling racecourse in the minutes prior to the emergency landing, and came just shy of striking roof of the new stand while onlookers attending an event at the racecourse watched in horror

Lapin

D Trent wrote: »

Fair play to the pilot? are you joking me sure he nearly took the Killanin Stand with him. Simply put, lives could have been lost.

Yes fair play to him. Its because of his actions in bringing the plane down safely that lives weren't lost. Including his own.

D Trent wrote: »

It was circling racecourse in the minutes prior to the emergency landing, and came just shy of striking roof of the new stand while onlookers attending an event at the racecourse watched in horror

Circling in order to find a suitable place to bring the aircraft down away from built up areas. Fairly common practice for precautionary landings in poor visability. Do you really think he was doing it for the crack?

Would you prefer if he remained in the air flying blind over a heavily populated area? Especially in the vicinity of the nearby Eircom mast and 7 story offices in Mervue.

Like I said. Fair play to him on a safe landing in difficult conditions. The onlookers you mention would have had something genuine to watch in horror if he hadn't done so.

D Trent

Its because of his actions in bringing the plane down safely that lives weren't lost. Including his own.

I feel the pilot in question placed the lives of many people, including children, into danger unnecessarily so by attempting to land his aircraft on a racecourse when Galway Airport was located a mere 4km away. To any person this would seem to be the most sensible option for the pilot.

The onlookers you mention would have had something genuine to watch in horror if he hadn't done so.

The onlookers I mention, many of which were on the first floor of the stand when the craft came perilously close to the roof of the stand, would not have something genuine to 'watch' as I suspect they would be seriously injured, or worse.

DieselPowered

D Trent wrote: »

I feel the pilot in question placed the lives of many people, including children, into danger unnecessarily so by attempting to land his aircraft on a racecourse when Galway Airport was located a mere 4km away. To any person this would seem to be the most sensible option

Do you fly? How would you decide just how bad the weather was from a pilots perspective? Maybe 4km away just wasn't an option?

D Trent

DieselPowered wrote: »

Do you fly? How would you decide just how bad the weather was from a pilots perspective? Maybe 4km away just wasn't an option?

In answer to your questions; 1. No I do not fly.
2. Weather forecast. It was promised to be bad that day. Don't risk it.
3. Second hand information suggests that the pilot could not find Galway Airport as he was from the Midlands, thereby indicating 4km was an option for him. However setting off on a journey without familiarizing oneself with the various airports/airstrips on the route or giving a call to air traffic control is for me a schoolboy error.

DieselPowered

D Trent wrote: »

In answer to your questions; 1. No I do not fly.
2. Weather forecast. It was promised to be bad that day. Don't risk it.
3. Second hand information suggests that the pilot could not find Galway Airport as he was from the Midlands, thereby indicating 4km was an option for him. However setting off on a journey without familiarizing oneself with the various airports/airstrips on the route or giving a call to air traffic control is for me a schoolboy error.

If you don't fly and don't have first hand information then maybe you should you should track down the pilot (who isn't from the midlands I read somewhere else) and ask him the reasons for safely putting down an aircraft in one piece as a precaution.

Where you start out from flying and where you intend to land don't usually fall under the 'same' weather forecast.all pilots are very aware of nearby airstrips for this very reason. In this case the extra 4km was obviously not an option.

D Trent

I could say to you my second hand information is more reliable than third party info previously posted on this website as I witnessed the incident.

If the pilot was not resident in the Midlands you might care to inform us where in fact he is resident.

DieselPowered

D Trent wrote: »

I could say to you my second hand information is more reliable than third party info previously posted on this website as I witnessed the incident.

If the pilot was not resident in the Midlands you might care to inform us where in fact he is resident.

You're going away from the point here.

D Trent

Please enlighten me of 'the point'. The thread is a discussion not on a particular aspect of the incident, but rather of the incident as a whole. I had a feeling you would shy away from the question as you cannot back it up, possibly because you don't have the information to hand.

What I will say is, which has also been expressed on the Aviation and Aircraft thread, I feel it was a poor decision by the pilot to fly in the first place when he'd have known visibility would be poor. This is clearly evident as lives were put in danger.

Storm 10

The pilots action was brilliant in bringing his aircraft down safely, people posting here dont have a clue about flying and visibilty, the weather that day turned very bad with extreme low cloud, a helicopter had to put down as it could not make the Airport where it was worse, this pilot was trying to land at the Airport but due to the visibilty he had no choice but to land at the first field he saw which was the racecourse. It was a text book landing and as other posters have said he saved lives in getting it down .

Well done

asdfg!

I would be intrigued to know your aviation qualifications, D Trent. Clearly you are in expert in aviation matters! How do you know for example that he didn't do everything you suggested. The conditions that day were in fact perfectly suitable for flying over most of the country. In fact they were better than forecast early on. There was a deterioration in the Galway area in the afternoon and it's likely this is what caught out the pilot. The rest of the country had better conditions. From experience you can easily find yourself in deteriorating conditions which were completely unforecast.

Whether or not the pilot was at fault for flying in the prevailing conditions. The point is that he made the right decision to land safely on the nearest piece of open ground. It's worth pointing out that it's a Piper Cub not a 747. A very light aircraft.

I have to say I don't entirely believe the story that it nearly hit the stand. In my experience inexperienced witnesses frequently report near misses and even crashes even during perfectly normal flight operations such as landing. Even people who live near airports who should be expected to know better.

The pilot did the right thing in the end. Even though the airport is actually less than a minute's flight time away from Ballybrit. He chose not to risk it and landed safely on the racetrack. A lesser pilot might have risked a do or die attempt into the airport with far more serious consequences.

Aerohead

Great job by the pilot to get on the ground, as previous poster said the weather changed dramatically with low sea fog moving in over the City, the plane had been out over Aran when this happened and he was very lucky that he saw a gap in the fog and went for it, great decision and two lives saved. You would think the Galway Races were on at the racecourse all that was there was a local community gathering, no lives were put at risk, real drama being posted here by D Trent.

spurscormac

Looking at the photos of where it finished up, its at the end of the back straight.
There's overhead wires above him - hard to know if he landed down the back straight, then turned it around when finished.
Perhaps he landed along the incline up towards that corner (opposite direction of what the horses run).
Also, there happens to be quite a large drainage hole at the moment (or at least there was on Friday when I was running there @ lunchtime) very close to where he is pictured, thankfully he missed it.

Glad he made it down safely, without any aviation knowledge I won't make any comment on changing weather conditions or possibilities to land at the airport or not.

gordongekko

Slightly off topic but does anyone know what the low flying aircraft thats buzzing around for the last two days is doing. The noise is wreaking me buzz

antoobrien

gordongekko wrote: »

Slightly off topic but does anyone know what the low flying aircraft thats buzzing around for the last two days is doing. The noise is wreaking me buzz

Skydiving.

dilallio

spurscormac wrote: »

Looking at the photos of where it finished up, its at the end of the back straight.
There's overhead wires above him - hard to know if he landed down the back straight, then turned it around when finished.
Perhaps he landed along the incline up towards that corner (opposite direction of what the horses run).

I heard he nearly fell at the 2nd last fence

antoobrien

asdfg! wrote: »

The pilot did the right thing in the end. Even though the airport is actually less than a minute's flight time away from Ballybrit. He chose not to risk it and landed safely on the racetrack. A lesser pilot might have risked a do or die attempt into the airport with far more serious consequences.

Indeed, it's not widely remembered but there was a fatal crash a number of years ago (more than 10 iirc) in similar conditions at the airport in carnmore.

?Cee?view

asdfg! wrote: »

A lesser pilot might have risked a do or die attempt into the airport with far more serious consequences.

This is exactly the point. This guy showed experience, maturity and good judgement.

To quote the old one,

"There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."

Galway K9

asdfg! wrote: »

I would be intrigued to know your aviation qualifications, D Trent. Clearly you are in expert in aviation matters! How do you know for example that he didn't do everything you suggested. The conditions that day were in fact perfectly suitable for flying over most of the country. In fact they were better than forecast early on. There was a deterioration in the Galway area in the afternoon and it's likely this is what caught out the pilot. The rest of the country had better conditions. From experience you can easily find yourself in deteriorating conditions which were completely unforecast.

Whether or not the pilot was at fault for flying in the prevailing conditions. The point is that he made the right decision to land safely on the nearest piece of open ground. It's worth pointing out that it's a Piper Cub not a 747. A very light aircraft.

I have to say I don't entirely believe the story that it nearly hit the stand. In my experience inexperienced witnesses frequently report near misses and even crashes even during perfectly normal flight operations such as landing. Even people who live near airports who should be expected to know better.

The pilot did the right thing in the end. Even though the airport is actually less than a minute's flight time away from Ballybrit. He chose not to risk it and landed safely on the racetrack. A lesser pilot might have risked a do or die attempt into the airport with far more serious consequences.

I have no clue about aviation, but i was out walking my dog, and the fog came from no where and i remember , saying to myself and others that he was flying very low to the ground, compared to other planes normally. He also circulated the area in doughiska about 3 times before heading off somewhere. It was almost like he was trying to find the air strip. Cool landing tho, would love to have seen it.

irishflyer

Clearly, D Trent you are not an aviator.. otherwise you would not have posted such comments about something you know absolutely nothing about. Having spoken to individuals who were at the scene I have been made aware of the fact that the plane was no where near the stands upon landing and therefore did not put any bystanders at risk.

The pilot was suddenly caught up in difficult weather conditions, which had you been in Galway at the time you would realise that the weather deteriorated around Galway very rapidly.

<snip> As many others have mentioned, the pilot did a great job and there were no injuries. Well done.

D Trent

Galway City Tribune 7/6/13

gordongekko

D Trent wrote: »

Galway City Tribune 7/6/13

wow perks funfair is still not open

Galway K9

That tribune article confirmed what i had suspected, it wasn't a safe landing option die to fog, it was he couldn't find the air strip.good job though