Langford: Parachutes 'should have saved pair' (From Maldon and Burnham Standard)

Langford: Parachutes 'should have saved pair'

5:00pm Sunday 23rd September 2012 in Local News

A report has claimed that two men killed in a plane crash in Langford may have survived if they had attempted to use their parachutes.

Instructor Simon Hulme, 33, and his student Spencer Bennett, 43, were killed when their light aircraft plunged nose first into a fishing lake off Ulting Lane in April last year.

Post-mortem examinations, carried out by a specialist aviation pathologist, found that both men suffered “severe multiple injuries on impact”.

RAF pilot, Flt Lt Hulme, of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, and Mr Bennett - a British national living in Holland - had been taking part in the third and final day of a formation flying school at North Weald Airfield.

Their YAK-52 plane was one of three aircraft flying in formation shortly before the crash.

An Air Accidents Investigation Branch report revealed that the two-seater aerobatic plane crashed into the three-acre fishing lake after going into an “inverted spin” at about 1,800ft.

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