Shut Off Engine And Hit The Silk

A pilot practicing aerobatics over Ossipee, NH Sunday successfully bailed out at 1,500 feet when he couldn’t get his spinning biplane to respond.

Lochland "L.D." Jeffries, 51, a commercial pilot and retired Air Force para-rescueman, was uninjured in the incident. His Ultimate 10-200 (file photo of type shown below) was destroyed.

"If he hadn't been able to get out of the plane, he would have been killed, I think," said Cpl. Joe Duchesne of the Ossipee Police Department, according to the Manchester Union.

Witnesses and rescue workers at the accident site said only the plane's tail was visible in the wreckage. The rest of the plane, they said, was buried underground.

Jeffries said he had been practicing aerobatic maneuvers for about 20 minutes. He was trying to roll horizontally out of a vertical loop, he said, but was too aggressive in the recovery.

"There's not a whole lot of time to think about it," he said in a telephone interview Sunday with the Union. "My training and my experience and my background prepared me to do what I did today."

Despite shutting down the power plant, and letting go of the controls at 1,800 feet the aircraft continued to spin. According to Jeffries, he popped the canopy at 1,700 feet, and jumped at 1,500 feet.

"The decision was already made for me," Jeffries said. "I knew what I was going to do when 1,500 feet showed up on my altimeter. If I wasn't under control at 1,500 feet, I was bailing out."

A neighbor and fellow pilot Douglas "Mac" MacIver, who saw the plane spin out of control, watched the plane drop below the tree line. He saw the pilot's ejection, but he never saw the parachute deploy.

"I thought, whoever it was, if his parachute did open, he was going to be awfully close to the ground," MacIver said.

Jeffries is a captain for Continental Airlines with 11,000 hours of piloting experience. He has served with the Air Force Pararescue unit, and has performed more than 1,000 parachute jumps.

This was his first emergency exit in more than three decades of flying, he said.

"I wasn't going to wait around to find out what the result was going to be if this thing didn't stop doing what it was doing by 1,500 feet," he said. "It's like an officer of the law who's willing to pull his gun on somebody who's going to shoot him. If you're not willing to do it, you're probably going to die."

The plane went down in the Soaring Heights aviation community in West Ossipee shortly after 11 am, police said. Jeffries, who calls the community home, took off from a nearby runway.

Federal Aviation Administration will investigate the accident.

Jeffries, who practiced regularly, said that he has personal rule. "At 1,500 feet ... if a plane is out of control, I give it back to the bank."

IDENTIFICATION
  Regis#: 38PC        Make/Model: EXP       Description: BATELEUR 2000 EXP
  Date: 11/11/2007     Time: 1602

  Event Type: Accident   Highest Injury: None     Mid Air: N    Missing: N
  Damage: Destroyed

LOCATION
  City: OSSIPEE   State: NH   Country: US

DESCRIPTION
  AIRCRAFT CRASHED DURING ACROBATIC MANEUVERS; AT 1500 FEET THE PILOT EJECTED
  AND PARACHUTED TO THE GROUND, OSSIPEE, NH

INJURY DATA      Total Fatal:   0
                 # Crew:   1     Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   
                 # Pass:   0     Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   
                 # Grnd:         Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   

WEATHER: VFR

OTHER DATA
  Activity: Unknown      Phase: Unknown      Operation: OTHER

  FAA FSDO: PORTLAND, ME  (EA65)                  Entry date: 11/13/2007

FMI: www.ultimatebiplane.com/