The Old Man In The Tree - A Very Local Crash

I decided for my next piece to do a bit of research into what crashes there’d been local to where I live in Croft just North of Warrington. Now if you include the old Burtonwood airbase which is about 4 miles as the crow flies, then there’s been plenty. Take that out of the equation though and I could only really find three. 

The first was Supermarine Attacker FB.1, WA535, from No.767 Squadron of the Fleet Air Arm which dived into the ground at Winwick (approximately 3 miles away) on the 5th February 1953. There’s a fair amount on the internet about this crash so I won’t go there at the moment. The remaining two were both at Kenyon Hall Farm Airstrip which is less than a mile from my home. The most recent and most interesting being Steen Skybolt G-SKIE, which crashed into trees in June 2018, so lets see what happened.

Kenyon Hall Farm

Kenyon Hall Farm Airstrip is a private strip off Winwick Lane which is a busy ‘A’ road that runs between Warrington and Leigh. The strip is run by the Lancashire Aero Club and is only open when they have a duty officer present. It has one 580 metre long grass runway, 23/05 which is orientated north-east/south-west, there is a slight upslope on the end of runway 23.

Kenyon Hall Farm (Pic from LAC website)

June 2018 – The Weather

The accident happened on the summer Sunday evening of the 24th June, 2018. The weather was good, sunny with high clouds. It was fairly warm at 23°C with a light westerly wind. So overall a pleasant summer Sunday. 

The Aircraft

The aircraft in question was a Steen Skybolt registration G-SKIE built n 1989. The Skybolt was a homebuilt aerobatic biplane which first flew back in October 1970. Unusually, it was designed in America by a school teacher, Lamar Steen as a high school engineering project.

The Skybolt has become popular as an amateur-built sporting biplane, with over 400 aircraft having been completed in over 29 countries.

G-SKIE at Barton. (Pic from Aviation-safety.net website)

So What Happened?

The Skybolt pilot was a 73 year old pensioner with 550 hours of flying experience. After arriving at Kenyon Hall Farm earlier in the day, at approximately 5.45pm he decided the time was right to return to the aircraft’s base at Barton. He was the only person on board the aircraft at the time.

The wind speed was 2 knots from a 340°direction so he chose to take off in a north‑easterly direction which does have some trees down the grass runways left edge. For some reason he started his take off run about 15° left of the strip’s track in the direction of the first tree. He took off from a three-point attitude, which he considered normal for this aircraft. As soon as he became airborne, he spotted the top of a tree ahead but was too late to avoid it. He hit the tree, slicing the top off it before crashing into the branches of another one. Surprisingly the aircraft didn’t fall out of the tree back to earth but came to rest on its left side in some lower branches.

Pic from Warrington Guardian website

Luckily the 73-year-old pilot wasn’t injured. However he couldn’t open the aircraft’s canopy and remained trapped in the cockpit. All he could do was sit there. He had to wait 50 minutes for firefighters to rescue him. Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service website says that two fire engines attended, one from Northwich (not sure why Northwich – it’s a long way away!) and one from Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service at Leigh a couple of miles away. On arrival crews found that the plane had landed in a tree and the pilot was trapped in the aircraft. They worked to release the pensioner who was then passed to the care of North West Ambulance Service who took him to Warrington Hospital to be checked over.

Investigation

It transpired that twelve months earlier, G-SKIE had made an emergency landing on the 14th fairway at Westhoughton Golf Club near Bolton. No one was injured then and it's believed the Skybolt had a mechanical fault.

Following an AAIB investigation, blame for the crash was placed on the pilot. Inspectors noted that the pilot himself acknowledged his own errors, with the report stating: "The pilot commented that "He believes this was caused by a failure to apply sufficient right rudder to counter the engine torque and not maintaining sight of the right edge of the runway, which borders a field of crops, in his peripheral vision."

The above AAIB report declared that G-SKIE had been "damaged beyond economical repair". Despite this, it was since offered for sale and subsequently sold on a ‘spares or repair’ basis, the advertisement did state that the fuselage would make a good basis for a new build after a complete strip down! Interestingly the aircraft has never been de-registered so may well reappear. It is currently registered to a Martyn John Coles from Crewe who is a Trustee of the G-SKIE Group.

Pic from afors.com website

Media Coverage

The crash was covered by all the local news websites some of which allowed comments. The majority of these comments revolved around why a 72 year old was permitted to fly an aircraft solo / unsupervised above residential areas !