I’m glad he can joke about it, but holy crap that was intense! I also don’t see why instructor shouldn’t be dragged over some slightly burning coal – seems he had multiple spots to set down on before it got almost out of hand.
AdamFrisch wrote:
seems he had multiple spots to set down on before it got almost out of hand.
To be fair to him, the glider probably became extremely difficult to steer (it’s controlled by weight shift after all) with the weight of a fully grown man hanging onto the primarly flight controls. It may simply not have been possible to have steered to any of these spots.
Wow, intense. You gotta hand it to the guy he did not lose his humor!
Seems to me he could have aborted the takeoff and landed immediately
Gotta hand it to this guy – keeps his sense of humor !!
Peter_Mundy wrote:
Seems to me he could have aborted the takeoff and landed immediately
Sure, but I’m unwilling to second guess him – with that huge weight hanging off his primary flight controls (which are weight shift after all), he may not have had sufficient control of pitch or roll to do that. The instructor could have effectively been a passenger at this point with very little ability to change the flight path – it’s not like he had a throttle to pull to idle, or even air brakes.
Incredible video. Amazing that he managed to hang on, really scary to watch. I guess the instructor was done for the day after this.
‘kin’ ‘ell. Very cool under pressure by both of them. Even with the alternative, I’m not sure that my hands and arms would have held my weight for that long. An amazing illustration of the old instruction to whatever happens remember first to fly the aircraft. Amazing after-thoughts from the passenger.
Looking at it from the other angle, and I am not suggesting this is what should happen, the instructor will be lucky to not be on the receiving end of a personal injury lawsuit.
The poor bugger will never get through an airport metal detector now. It’s gonna be a close body search every time and I hope he enjoys them (probably not since most blokes getting the airport check get touched up by another bloke) 
Won’t these metal plates be removed after some time?
