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23 May, 2009 15:29

A double miracle for an unfortunate aviator

Russian rescuers have saved the life of a pilot whose light aircraft got trapped in a 220 kV power line – it was a miraculous escape as his plane could either have fallen or simply burned to ashes.

It is yet unknown why the aircraft, which was flying at 300-meter altitude, had dropped down and become entangled in the wires, NTV channel said.

But it became clear at once that the pilot was in fact very lucky. The rescuers could hardly believe their eyes because during the crash one of the cables cut through the plane’s outer covering and penetrated the flight deck, directly behind the pilot’s back.

The rescuers said that if the plane had also been in contact with the neighboring cable, it would have burned completely.

“This pilot was born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” says Roman Chapaev from the Voronezh rescue service as quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. “The plane got tangled in only one cable, and the pilot didn’t fall out of the deck and didn’t touch another cable. If, God forbid, that had happened, nothing would be left both of the man and the machine”.

The aircraft flew from an aero-club in Stary Oskol in southwestern Russia, and actually had no permission for a flight, as the club’s representatives said to NTV. It was a training flight – which almost ended up as a tragedy in the neighboring Voronezh region.

Later, the pilot confessed that while he was waiting to be rescued, in his thoughts he had said good-bye to his family.

During the rescue, operation which continued for almost six hours, the pilot said he was experiencing periodic electric shocks.

He was finally saved after the line was tripped – thus leaving several settlements without electricity.

After the 44-year-old appeared on the ground and he was given the first aid, the only words he was able to pronounce were “thank you for saving my life.”

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