An instructor who was on a private flight with a passenger piloted the plane that made an emergency landing on the Tallinn Highway near Adazi on Saturday evening, LETA has found out.
Juris Ignatovics, chief flight instructor at the Eriva Pilot School, told LETA that any pilot school has two types of flights – training flights and for-hire flights, where former students, instructors or anyone with a pilot’s licence can be at the controls of the aircraft. These people are checked before the flight according to a certain procedure.
Ignatovics noted that in the incident on the Tallinn Highway, an experienced instructor was at the controls of the plane, which, in his opinion, played a big role in the fact that everything ended well and everyone is alive. The school is currently awaiting the results of the investigation, which will probably be ready in a couple of weeks at the earliest. In the meantime, the instructor himself has not yet been spoken to, as he is most likely still in shock. This is planned to be done after the May bank holiday.
“This is classed as an accident, which is when there are casualties or damage to the aircraft. In this case there is structural damage where the wing of the plane has been damaged by a road sign. There have been no accidents, nothing has ever been broken and the school has been in operation since 2007. There has been another serious accident, but there was a problem with the control system and the pilot landed the plane without damage in Spilve Meadow,” Ignatovics said.
He added that the pilot school is prepared for such situations and they are discussed and taught very seriously.
Asked about the damage, Ignatovics said that it had not been calculated yet and was planned to be done later. The school has another plane of the same type that can be flown, so they will have to use it for a while and it will not be a big problem. Now that the summer season has started, which is also the flying season, this plane will be under more strain.
Initial information indicates that the aircraft made an emergency landing on the motorway due to engine problems, said Aivis Vincevs, Head of Operations at the Civil Aviation Agency (CAA). He noted that the pilot had notified Latvian air traffic controller Latvijas Gaisa Satiksme of the problems before the emergency landing, but the time may have been too short to stop traffic on the motorway.
“The technical problems occurred at an altitude of about 500 meters and the time to halt traffic was too short. The pilot tried to soar to the air strip in Adazi, but the altitude was not sufficient for him to land successfully there,” explained Vincevs.
He mentioned that a similar case on a motorway occurred in 2022 in the Cesis region, when a plane was forced to make an emergency landing due to weather conditions. However, the traffic there was not as dense as on the Tallinn Highway.
Vincevs acknowledged that the consequences could have been different, given that the highway is heavily used and there are many cars using it. However, he urges not to speculate on what could have happened, as the only consequence of the accident is a damaged aircraft.
The Transport Accident and Incident Investigation Bureau will carry out an investigation and an expert investigation. Vilis Kipurs, head of the Aviation Accident and Incident Investigation Division, told LETA that there is nothing to comment on yet.
Source: BNS
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