Nearly landed on the beach: Helgoland
 

Someone laying on the beach almost gets hit, lands short of runway. Watch the video it's shocking…..

"I don't care if he's got a PA-28, its my beach towel and I got here first..."

Love the previous post! :)

With the shot at the end showing some damage to the engine cowl, he must have taken out part of the fence with his prop. That'll be expensive.

To have caused that damage to the cowling the post would have certainly hit the prop and the leading edge. The damage looks like fretting from the cowl vibrating. Looking at the vid our heroic Biggles was well clear of the posts.

The interesting point is why was that obstacle sunbathing on short finals?

In summary it's the airport/councils fault for letting numpties wander about in an airway. Do people sleep on motorways in that country? Biggles is in the clear and performed his emergency short field landing well.

The accompanying story doesn't mention any emergency, though.

Good. He'll no doubt find the imminent loss of his license even more expensive !

That person thoroughly deserves being dragged across the hottest coals his license issuer can find and his license revoked permanently.

An utterly unacceptable piece of flying, the pilot is a danger to himself and others around him (both on the ground and in the sky).

From the news article :

Luckily one does not lose his license for making mistakes. Otherwise there would maybe two or three airliners still flying worldwide...

The incident causes a lot of turbulence on the German forums*. There is some argument about the signposts on the beach: while all agree there are some, they are described very differently ("Lorry-size" is mentioned by one); some also state there are traffic lights - if so, I presume the radio operator can activate them as seen appropriate. But there is never an answer to remarks regarding the nature of the runway - shortish, and water at both ends with only a tiny bit of beach between) which might well inspire a pilot to come in lower than usual. The slightest bit of downdraft is then sufficient to provoke a mishap.

For myself I can't understand the aerodrome operator does not control the active runway's short finals area more intensively. A 4x4 in emergency services' colors a few times per hour should do the job, except for those really persisting in their stupidity (and for those, no help is possible anyway).
Certainly the operator has every motivation: if ever things come to grief, as they must do one day if things go on like this, the blame will be mostly if not exclusively on them.


*for one example, those who read German may look at
https://www.pilotundflugzeug.de/foru...,02,05,2017507

Err, no. You can clearly see a nice thick fence post tumbling away like a skittle. He definitely took out the fence and planted the wheels in the sand before the runway. A very ugly bit of flying. The sunbather probably had to burn his speedos after the one.

Alternative definition for landing skid marks :E