Blind pilot lands safely
Posted by Kiran | Under International, Technology and Gadgets Tuesday Nov 11, 2008
A British pilot, Jim O’Neill, went blind 40 minutes into a solo flight from Scotland to southeastern England last week. He was 5,000 feet in the air. The cause of his sudden blindness was a stroke, for which he felt no other effects except the loss of his sight.
Jim O’Neill thought he was dazzled by sunlight and made an emergency call for help, but later after not being able to regain his sight he realizxed something of a more serious nature was happening.
“It was terrifying,” O’Neill said. “Suddenly, I couldn’t see the dials in front of me.”
Royal Air Force Wing Commander Paul Gerrard located the plane and began flying close to the plane and gave directions to O’Neill.
“Landing an aircraft literally blind needs someone to be right there to say ‘Left a bit, right a bit, stop, down,’” Gerrard said. “On the crucial final approach, even with radar assistance, you need to take over visually. That’s when having a fellow pilot there was so important.”
“The doctors have confirmed that he suffered a stroke from a blood clot, but he doesn’t seem to have suffered any other ill-effects apart from losing his sight,” O’Neill’s son said. “He says he went blind very suddenly and then, once he’d got over the shock, was able to distinguish a bit of darkness and light.”
“It’s one of those things you might hear about happening in some sort of all-action film but it’s hard to believe what they did,” he said.
