Two people have been injured after a light aircraft struck trees and crashed just south of Cardigan.
Mid and West Wales fire service said the two-seater microlight came down at Rhos-hill around 11:10 BST on Sunday.
The man and woman on board were given first aid at the scene after complaining of back pains.
One was flown by air ambulance to Morriston Hospital, Swansea, while the other went by road to Glan Gwili Hospital, Carmarthen.
Neither is thought to be seriously hurt, according to the Wales Ambulance Service.
Three fire crews from Cardigan, Crymych and Newcastle Emlyn were called to the scene to make sure it was safe although the aircraft did not catch fire.
The scene has now been cordoned off and is in the hands of Dyfed-Powys Police.
A light aircraft has crash-landed in the back garden of a house in Cheltenham.
An emergency system on board the single-engine Cirrus SR22 was deployed, releasing a parachute to lower the plane down.
A Gloucestershire Police spokesperson said the pilot, a 76-year-old man from London, suffered minor injuries.
The homeowner’s son Jamie Greeff was in bed at the time and said the noise was like “something out of a movie”.
‘Pilot yelling’
An eyewitness filmed the aircraft coming down towards houses
“We have building work going on next door and all the builders were yelling, and I just thought it was building equipment,” said 16-year-old Jamie.
“The next thing I know my dad is yelling at me that a plane has crashed into the garden.
“And then I look out the back and there is this plane in the trees and the pilot was yelling that he was alright.”
Emergency crews were called to Langdale Road in Up Hatherley at 10:45 BST.
Nearby houses were evacuated as a precaution while the fire service made the scene safe.
Gloucestershire Airport, at Staverton, which is 2.5 miles (4km) from the scene, said the 4-seat aircraft had been on its way to land there at the time of the crash.
‘All shook up’
David Shatford said he was working nearby and went to help the pilot out of the plane
“The pilot deployed an emergency parachute system and the aircraft landed in a residential garden near the Hatherley area of Cheltenham,” said a spokesperson.
David Shatford, from Cheltenham, watched the drama from scaffolding while working on a nearby home.
“We heard a big loud noise, [the plane] was spinning in the parachute and landed in the trees about 12ft away from us,” he said.
“We stood back, and then I went towards the plane – me and another gentleman – and helped the pilot out. He was all shook up and didn’t talk much.”
The parachute was designed by BRS Aerospace based in Minnesota, USA, in 1975. Company director Boris Popov had the idea following a 400ft (120m) fall he survived in a collapsed hand glider.
“I think this is our 295th person that’s been saved with the use of our system,” said current CEO and president Larry Williams.
“Here’s a guy who literally was able to deploy the system and walk away, essentially uninjured, from this.
“Probably the most gratifying thing in terms of what we do is when someone comes around and says: ‘Hey, I deployed your system and it saved my life’. That’s very rewarding.”
Two remain seriously ill in hospital after the incident
FAMILY and friends of a dad who died in a light aircraft crash which left his son seriously injured have paid tribute to a ‘devoted father’.
Iain Nuttall, of Blackburn, was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident at Caernarfon Airport, shortly before 11.30am on Sunday.
The 37-year-old had been on his way with his father John Nuttall and his only child, Daniel, five, for Sunday lunch in North Wales.
Iain’s father John had been flying the four-seater Piper Cherokee which took off from Fly Blackpool at Blackpool Airport earlier in the day.
The 61-year-old ‘regular flyer’, of Dean Road, Haslingden remained in a critical condition yesterday in a specialist unit at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor.
He was expected to undergo surgery for serious multiple lower leg injuries.
His grandson Daniel, said to have serious head and abdominal injuries, is also expected to undergo surgery.
The Nuttall family, including Iain’s wife Michelle, were at their bedsides.
Former Rossendale councillor Peter Nuttall, of Haslingden, is Iain’s uncle and the brother of John Nuttall.
Yesterday, he said the family were struggling to come to terms with the accident.
He said: “My brother is going to have to have an operation and we think little Daniel is going to be okay.
“All we know about what happened is that the plane crashed on landing. We hope to know more in the next few days.”
Neighbours in the Shadsworth area of Blackburn expressed their ‘shock’ and ‘devastation’ at Iain’s death and described him as a ‘nice person’.
Lee Cych, whose son is Daniel’s best friend, said: “It is absolutely heartbreaking news. Iain was such a good lad.
“He had just passed his truck driving test and was really happy with his new job.
“Before that he had worked at Oswaldtwistle Mills as a security guard.
“We have spoken to the family and they said Daniel is going to need surgery. It’s just so sad.”
Iain had been working as a truck driver for Accolade Logistics in Clayton-le-Moors since January.
His boss, managing director Gary Bowker, said: “Everyone here is absolutely devastated. He was such a nice person. He was hard-working and conscientious. We are all in shock.
“Our thoughts are now with his family at this very sad time.”
A keen motorcyclist who loved adventure sports, Iain was said to have served in the forces and was a regular at the TT Races in the Isle of Man.
His friends at Oswaldtwistle Mills described the devoted father as ‘the practical joker’ who was always playing tricks on his colleagues.
According to witnesses, the aircraft may have clipped trees as it came to land at one of the airport’s two runways.
The plane was said to have landed on grass and was then flipped onto its roof on impact.
The incident was referred to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). The RAF took the wreckage to Farnborough for further tests yesterday.
A post mortem examination is expected to be carried out tomorrow.
An investigation is under way after a man died and two people, one of them a boy, were critically injured when a light aircraft crashed at Caernarfon Airport in Gwynedd.
Firefighters cut the man from the wreckage and he was pronounced dead at the scene of Sunday morning’s crash.
A man in his 60s suffered “serious multiple lower limb injuries” and the boy had head and abdomen injuries.
North Wales Police said the three are from a family in Lancashire.
The aircraft flipped onto its roof on a runway at Dinas Dinlle, and experts from the Department for Transport’s Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) were sent to the scene on Sunday to start a preliminary inquiry.
Police are appealing for witnesses who saw the plane as it approached the runway to get in touch as the area is on the coast and is popular with visitors.
On Monday morning it remained where it crashed landed, with police still at the scene.
Witnesses say the Piper Cherokee single-engine aircraft appeared to clip trees as it approached the runway.
On Sunday, local cafe owner Dyfed Williams said: “We were preparing to open and there was a lot of activity with five fire engines, an ambulance and then the police [passing], and we realised it must have been something serious.
“A lot of local people came down to see what was going on and obviously we are thinking the worse.
“The airfield has been here since the Second World War and it’s now busy with pleasure trips and popular with small aircraft and microlights.”
Eight crews from North Wales Fire and Rescue Service were sent to the scene.
The Welsh Ambulance Service said the man in his 60s and the boy were taken to hospital at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor while firefighters worked to free the trapped man.
The condition of the two injured people was described on Sunday as critical.
Anyone with any information relating to the incident is asked to contact North Wales Police on 101.
Alenia Aermacchi has lost its second of three pre-production prototypes of the M346 transonic trainer in a crash over the weekend.
The lone pilot ejected safely and no one on the ground was hurt.
Company officials declined to answer questions, but said in a statement that the cause is a “technical problem” that occurred about 20 min. after takeoff from Turin-Caselle airport.
The crash site is in Val Bormida, between the provinces of Cuneo and Savona, company officials say.
Alenia officials have established a technical commission to investigate the incident.
The first prototype aircraft, owned by the company, crashed in Dubai in November 2011 as it departed following the air show there. Company officials have not discussed the cause of that crash, but they say the issue is peculiar to the prototype and not adopted on production aircraft.
Meanwhile, deliveries have begun to the Italian air force, which is evaluating the aircraft. Sales have also been solidified with Singapore and Israel.
The incident comes at a poor time, though, as the U.S. Air Force is preparing to buy up to 350 jet trainers. The M346 is likely to compete against a team comprising BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman offering the Hawk, and Lockheed Martin/Korea Aerospace Industries offering the T-50. Boeing has also said it will design an aircraft to specifications for the competition.
Due to tight funding, the Air Force is not expected to begin the competition until after 2014.
US ‘Eagle Squadron’ pilot, made up solely of American airmen, hit the Valleys mountain after encountering low cloud in September 1941
The niece of a US pilot who died after hitting a Welsh mountainside during World War Two has made a poignant first visit to the crash site.
More than 70 years after Texas-born Early Willson was killed on the Rhigos mountain near Treherbert, Rhondda, Dolcie ‘Dana’ Ehlinger returned.
Dolcie hadn’t been born in September 1941 when her uncle Early, a member of the RAF’s 79 squadron based at Fairwood Common, Swansea, died.
He was based in the UK because he was a member of the so-called Eagle squadrons – made up solely of US pilots.
Early, who was used to the warm weather in the Lone Star state, had asked to join a squadron serving in a warmer climate and the 79th were due to transfer to India the following March.
Sadly, while returning from a training exercise over the Treherbert area he encountered cloud and found himself below the mountain tops in the Rhondda Valley heading north to Rhigos.
On seeing the mountainside loom up, Early pulled up his Hurricane aircraft too sharply to avoid a collision, but stalled the aircraft and hit the ground.
He died aged just 22.
News of the crash was sent back to his parents – a distraught Dolcie Willson and Robert Early senior.
Yesterday, on her visit to the landmark site in her family’s history, niece Dolcie, 71, who now lives in New Orleans, said: “I was born about seven months after the crash. It’s incredible.
“His mother or father, I don’t think they could accept it, or my mother. She was very close to her brother growing up.
“There was a picture and I would say: ‘Who’s that?’ They said: ‘It’s your uncle, he died in the war’.
“We weren’t in an era where people appreciated their history. They wouldn’t talk about it – I think it was too much emotion.
“All they received was a telegram, that was it and a letter from the war ministry several weeks later saying it was a nice funeral.”
Early’s body was not repatriated because it was not done for foreign pilots serving in the RAF and his is one of 24 Commonwealth war graves at St Hilary’s Church, Killay, Swansea. The family eventually visited the grave in 1956.
And it was spotted there by Iain Smith of Swansea, who emailed newspapers in San Antonio and went to the World War Two memorial in Washington where no record of Early could be found due to the fact he joined the RAF and not the US Air Force.
Eventually Iain raised the matter with Steve Jones, the author of book Fallen Flyers which details stories behind the many flying accidents in and around Gower, and Early’s family was located in the US.
The story of Early’s crash was not originally known in the area because it was heavily censored.
But one man who was there was an 11-year-old Len Pearce who heard the low-flying hurricane piloted by Early on his way home from school that Friday afternoon.
Shortly after he went to the crash site with some of his friends and saw the wrecked Hurricane on the mountainside. The pilot was beyond help.
The police then arrived and mounted a guard over the site.
Mr Pearce, now in his 80s, also revisited the site and met with Dolcie.
He said: “Today, I suppose I would be terribly shocked. At that time, it was an adventure – getting near the plane and getting some souvenir bullets.”
Eventually Early’s story has become known and Dolcie went onto write a biography about her uncle made up of letters he wrote to his mother from the age of 10 called “Letters From My Son”.
Dolcie said earlier in his life he had been a photographer with the Cotton Club in New York City and had written about Cab Calloway and Katherine Hepburn – including an alleged affair she was having with a pilot.
Now there are efforts to raise money for a plaque commemorating his story.
Author Mr Jones said: “We hope to get a plaque or small memorial to tell people what went on. Otherwise nobody knows down there in Treherbert.”
Dolcie added: “He got the bug. He loved to fly and in those days you were so free when you flew.”
A US military refuelling plane has crashed in northern Kyrgyzstan.
The US transit centre at Manas airport confirmed the KC-135 Stratotanker had come down. The status of its crew and cause of the crash were not known.
The plane disappeared off the radar near the village of Chaldovar, some 160km (100 miles) west of Manas and close to the border with Kazakhstan.
Witnesses said they saw an explosion and heard a boom, and that wreckage was scattered across a wide area.
“I was working with my father in the field, and I heard an explosion. When I looked up at the sky I saw the fire. When it was falling, the plane split into three pieces,” resident Sherikbek Turusbekov was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.
One local news agency, 24.kg, quoted witnesses as saying the plane had hit a high-voltage power transmission line before it crashed, and quoted a local official as saying the pilots had ejected from the plane. Neither report has been confirmed.
The wreckage is reported to be scattered across a wide area of mountainous terrain, which is hampering the rescue effort and investigation.
“Emergency services are on scene. The status of the crew is unknown,” the US transit centre said in a statement. It did not specify how many people were on board, but the KC-135 is thought to carry around three crew members.
It is not clear where the plane was heading but the transit centre at Manas International Airport outside Bishkek is used by the US military to maintain its operations in Afghanistan.
Seven crew members died when a US civilian Boeing 747 cargo plane crashed at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan on Monday.
A US civilian cargo plane has crashed at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, killing its seven crew, officials say.
The plane came down shortly after take-off and crashed within the boundaries of the huge US-run airbase, said a Nato spokesperson at the base.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the crash, but their involvement was denied by Nato.
Bagram, near the Afghan capital Kabul, is the largest military base for US troops in Afghanistan.
Witnesses said the plane reached an altitude of some 400m (1,300ft) before suddenly “falling out of the sky”, Bagram’s district governor, Abdul Shukor, told Reuters news agency.
The crash was confirmed by the plane’s owners, National Air Cargo.
“We did lose all seven crew members,” said a spokeswoman for the Florida-based firm.
The Taliban were quick to claim responsibility, telling the Pakistan-based Afghan Islam Press they shot down the plane.
But Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said there were no reports of militant activity in or around the base at the time of the crash.
No cause for the crash has been given – Nato said it is being investigated.
The crash comes two days after four military personnel were killed in a crash in the southern Afghan province of Zabul, which officials said was also not due to military activity.
Kazakhstan’s transport ministry has identified the SCAT Bombardier CRJ200 involved in an accident outside the city of Almaty as a 13-year old airframe.
It states that the aircraft – registered UP-CJ006, with serial number 7413 – was originally built in 2000.
The ministry states that the aircraft had logged just over 25,700h in operation spanning 22,975 cycles, and gives the date of its “last repair” as June 2011.
It adds that the aircraft’s airworthiness certificate was valid until September 2013.
The CRJ200 was previously operated by Danish carrier Cimber Sterling.
Kazakhstan’s prime minister has ordered the formation of a governmental commission to investigate the crash, says the ministry.
Flight DV760 had been operating between the northern Kazakh of Kokshetau and Almaty, with 15 passengers and five crew, when it came down. Local reports indicate there are no survivors.
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Two people have been injured after a light aircraft struck trees and crashed just south of Cardigan.
A light aircraft has crash-landed in the back garden of a house in Cheltenham.
David Shatford said he was working nearby and went to help the pilot out of the plane
By Chris Glyn-Jones
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