Emma Martin
Peter Holloway writes:
We have finished the analysis of the two GPS data loggers Emma was
carrying last Saturday. They provide what is best thought of as a bread crumb
trail, like in the story of Hansel and Gretel. This allows us to track Emmas
speed, altitude and map position at intervals of between 1 and 5 seconds apart
for the whole duration of her flight. Their analysis confirms our initial suspicions that Emmas glider was flying
normally until the last minute or so of her flight. She then experienced some
extremely turbulent air at low level during a normal landing approach. This in
itself would not normally be a concern and the pilot would normally make
corrections and land normally. However as I have previously speculated,
somewhere about 5-10 seconds before her flight ended, she was pushed into a
sudden right hand turn down wind by an unusually strong gust and could not turn
back unto the prevailing wind with the altitude remaining. It is inconceivable
that she would not have been rendered unconscious immediately during the
landing. The devices also show, as we would have expected, knowing Emma, that she behaved
professionally and was continuing to try to fly the glider in a to a safe
landing until the very last moment. The accident was not caused by anything that Emma did wrong, it appears that it
was simply unprecedented, unbelievably poor luck. If she had been in exactly the
same place a minute prior or after, the accident would likely not have happened.
http://OzReport.com/1515156003
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