It’s been a week now since the super cell thunderstorm on Whit Monday brought havoc to the city of Düsseldorf and surrounding areas. People now mockingly call it “Jungle-dorf”, in response to the many streets that were completely covered with fallen trees and branches and indeed looked like scenes from Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones. But 6 people have lost their lifes, so it’s not so amusing.
On the afternoon of Whit Monday, I was flying locally with some friends to shoot some photos of the Rhein-Ruhr area. I chartered D-ETIP, my favorite aircraft at the flying school that I usually rent from at EDLE. D-ETIP is a 2006 C172S Skyhawk SP with a Garmin G1000 glass cockpit – a beautiful aircraft. Turns out I was the last human to ever fly it. Only hours later, the storm took D-ETIP flying once again – regardless of the tie-downs, the ropes were torn – but didn’t care for a decent landing. The aircraft touched ground upside-down, also damaging neighboring D-ECZV.
In total,4 airplanes were damaged, two of which are totaled. Further, the airship which is stationed at the field has been damaged severely, too, and may not be recoverable.
A very bad day for the aviation community in Essen-Mülheim. It saddens me but I understand that for me, this is a hobby. For others (instructors, commercial students, the school itself) the loss is far more substantial. I hope adequate replacement can be found soon.
D-ETIP on Whit Monday, airship in the background:
D-ETIP the next morning:
The airship:
I checked why some of the images above don’t load and pasting the actual URL into a fresh browser window returns this
Obviously the website they are sitting on doesn’t like the number of downloads.
If I could get that pic I would screenshoot it into Imgur and replace it.
Just checked from another site over a VPN: they are not blocking them by IP. They are blocking them by a straight number of downloads. How stupid! But this is a good reason to not link to photo sites if you want the pics to remain online! Always grab a copy of it…
Edit: done 
