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FREE EIGHT PAGE BESTIVAL PULLOUT GUIDE!Friday September 10, 2010 Issue 71 www.iwgazette.co.uk 30p

HERO PILOT DIES IN ISLAND PLANE CRASH

ONE OF the two men who died when their light aircraft was in collision with another plane over the Island had been hailed a hero earlier in his flying career. Michael Willis, 73, once safely landed a badly damaged plane carrying more than 100 passengers, when he was a commercial pilot with Dan Air.

Mr Willis’ son James was also killed in the tragic accident that happened near Havenstreet.

See full story page 3

BY JASON KAY

Contact the Gazette for News and Advertising: 02032 398101 www.iwgazette.co.ukThe Gazette, Friday, September 10, 2010 3

NEWS

A MAN whose father and brother were killed in a plane crash on the Island has described the chilling moment when he realised there had been the terrible accident.

Jonathan Willis, 38, knew of the crash when he heard the “mayday, mayday, mayday” call coming through the radio of his own aircraft.

Michael Willis, 73, of Stanmore, and his son James, 42, of Hillingdon, died following a collision with another plane on the final five-mile stretch of the Merlin Trophy race. The

pilot of the other plane and another aircraft behind both sent out the distress call as Mr Willis’s craft, a Mooney M20B, lost its wing and went down over woodland.

Mr. Willis had a career as a commercial pilot and once guided a plane carrying 119 passengers to safety having lost the nose cone and navigation systems in a heavy storm.

Jonathan said: “The pilot who did the second mayday call said ‘there’s been a collision, an aircraft has gone down. It’s the green and white Mooney’. That’s when that icy cold feeling just hit

me. We were just going over the finishing line at the time. It’s just that feeling of ‘Oh my God’.

“I think one or two people said that the wing had detached and that’s when I knew that it was almost certainly fatal.”

The planes were in collision near the end of the race, which was staged as part of the build-up to the world famous Schneider Trophy race that had been scheduled for Sunday, but was later cancelled because of the double fatality.

Jane Willis, who had been married to Michael for 43

years, was watching the race at the time of the crash. She said: “All the marshals, two or three of them, started running across. I couldn’t see anything that had happened. I said to the woman I was sitting with ‘something’s happened’.

“The chap behind me had his computer on and I heard him say ‘it’s the mooney’. I didn’t know what had happened but the shock started to build up. It became the worst day of my life.

“I’ve always known Michael as a survivor and he always seemed to know how to manage a situation. He

was quite a bit older than I was. He was too sensible, too practical, too much of a personality and too ‘with it’ to die. It wasn’t plausible. We are all just trying to cope.”

He cheated death on two

other occasions, when an air bubble rendered his breathing equipment useless while scuba diving and again while filming a group of eight sharks that began to circle him.

TWO DIE IN CRASH TRAGEDY

The victims father and son Michael and James Willis

A FATHER and son died when their light aircraft collided in mid-air with another plane during an historic race over the Isle of Wight.

Experienced pilot Michael Willis, 73, and his son James, 42, died instantly as their four-seater lost a wing and plummeted into dense woodland.

Mr Willis, from Stanmore, Middlesex, had been a captain for several commercial airlines during his long flying career.

His wife watched in horror from an airfield as the pair’s single-engine, four-seater, Mooney M20B aircraft collided with a sports plane.

Mr Willis senior and his son, from Hillingdon, Middlesex, had been

racing for several years as members of the Royal Aero Club Records, Racing and Rally Association.

Police and the fire brigade cut their bodies from the plane’s wreckage in the woods.

The second aircraft lost its landing gear but its pilot and co-pilot miraculously survived with only minor injuries after crash-landing on grass at the Island’s Bembridge Aiport.

They were revealed to be a 55-year-old man from Iver, Buckinghamshire, and a 32-year-old man from Ryton, near Coventry.

The planes were among 19 aircraft taking part in Saturday’s Merlin Trophy races – a warm-up for Sunday’s main, annual Schneider Trophy competition.

They were flying around a triangular course stretching from Bembridge to Portsmouth and Cowes when the planes collided about three miles from the finish over Havenstreet on the Island.

The competition, which was inaugurated by French aviator Jacques Schneider in 1913, was cancelled after the crash.

The Association’s chair- man Tim Wassell said of the victims: “I know them very well. The father was a very qualified and competent pilot. He had been captain for several commercial airlines earlier in his life.”

A local farmer, who asked not be named, was the first to arrive at the crash scene and alerted the police and fire brigade.

He said: “I heard a big, loud thud and a bang just after 5pm.

“I got on my tractor and went down to the woods.

“There was lots of smoke and trees were on fire and the plane was nose down in the mud.

“The plane was upside down and it didn’t look like anyone was alive.”

Investigators from the Department of Transport’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch are probing the cause of the crash.

Inspector Paul Saville of Hampshire Police said: “We are continuing our investigation into this collision.

“I would ask anyone who has recovered any parts of the aircraft, which may be spread over a large area, to take them to police.”

THE CHILLING CALL OF ‘MAYDAY MAYDAY’

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