A Brave pilot landed a passenger jet “blind” after giant hailstones smashed the cockpit’s windscreen and almost tore off its nose cone.
Incredible pictures show the plane after the pilot’s heroic emergency landing at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport with 127 passengers on board.
They show the severe external damage to the Airbus A320 from sudden unexpected hail during a thunder storm.
Captain Alexander Akopov said he and other crew were celebrating as if it was a “second birthday” after his lifesaving heroics in coping with damage caused by hailstones the size of hen’s eggs.
Incredibly, his autopilot was taken out in the damage.
He says in his 30 years of flying their locator did not show the weather disaster, this is why it happened. It was hard, but the main thing is that people are alive.
The catastrophe hit some 10 minutes after taking off on a Turkish airline Atlas-global flight to Erkan in northern Cyprus.
Having climbed to 1300 metres, the hailstones cracked the cockpit windows — preventing the pilot from seeing his runway approach.
The captain was permitted to try and land at Ataturk airport even though it had been closed due to the atrocious weather.
Source: News.com.au
