A pilot who was faced with the dilemma during a flight has taken an incredible step to save the lives of people on board.
Andrew Townsend
A RAF pilot identified as Nathan Jones crawled along the ceiling of a nosediving plane to get back to the cockpit, managing to save everyone on board, Metro UK reports.
Nathan Jones, 34, fractured his back during the incident, which happened when his co-pilot’s camera jammed the controls.
A military court heard that Andrew Townsend had got his camera out to take photos when his co-pilot, Nathan Jones, had left the cockpit to get a cup of tea on the military flight from the UK to Afghanistan.
When the plane went into a dive, Mr Jones was initially pinned to the ceiling by the force.
According to Metro UK, while the plane plummeted 4,400ft nose first in just 29 seconds, he managed to clamber back into the cockpit, despite the door being lower than the ceiling.
Extremely carefully, so that the wings of the plane didn’t ‘snap off’, he pulled back the controls to pull the plane back to a normal position.
He was so badly injured that he had to be medically downgraded from his role, but saved the lives of all those on board the Voyager aircraft, who had been ‘pinned to the ceiling and thought they were going to die’.
Mr Jones will captain Great Britain at this year’s Invictus Games in Canada – an event where injured servicemen and women from 17 nations compete against each other.
He told Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire today that on the day it happened, February 9 2014, he had left his seat to fetch a cup of tea when the plane suddenly ‘rumbled’ and he ‘hit the ceiling’.
He described how the aircraft – previously cruising at 33,000ft over the Black Sea – was violently shaking, and he could hear the rush of wind outside.
‘I could see we were going into the sea, or something very dark,’ he said.
‘There were a lot of flashing lights in the cockpit, everything was stuck to the ceiling and Flt Lt Townshend was shouting ‘Get back into your seat, I can’t get the auto pilot out’.’
Amazingly, he recovered the aircraft from the dive by gently pulling back on the joystick.
The plane then diverted to the nearest airfield at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, so casualties could be treated and the cause could be diagnosed.
After landing, Andrew Townshend was asked about what he was doing before it happened, and he said he was ‘looking out at the stars’ and that the accident was due to a technical error.
The court heard he deleted photos he took in the cockpit after the incident.
He now admits the camera blocked the controls, claiming it fell from a shelf.
But prosecutors allege the camera had been placed in front of an arm rest and wedged against the joystick as he moved his seat.
Flt Lt Townshend denies two counts of perjury and making a false record in relation to lying, but admits negligently performing a duty in relation to causing the camera to collide with the side-stick.