Most of us have heard stories about huge pieces of ice falling from aeroplanes while they are in flight. They fall to the ground many times without any incidents, but every now and again someone gets an unwelcome reminder that you might just be unlucky to get hit by one.
That is exactly what happened at the beginning of July this year, when a pensioner got a huge surprise as he was relaxing in his back garden, having a bite to eat. His house is underneath a flight path coming out from Bristol Airport, and he believes that a plane from that airport could have been responsible for the block of ice that hit him.
Fortunately he was very lucky – the ice hit him on the thigh instead of on the head. If that had happened the outcome could have been very different. As it was he only had some bruising.
But was it a plane from Bristol Airport that dropped the ice, or could it have come from elsewhere?
A spokesman for Bristol Airport said that it was more than possible that a plane from another airport could have dropped the ice. We don’t know – nor could it probably be revealed – how big the ball of ice was when it started falling. It probably would have lost some of its size en route to earth. We have certainly heard of much bigger lumps of ice falling to the ground in the past; the ball that hit this gentleman was said to be about the same size as a grapefruit. He had his picture taken with the item before it melted away to nothing.
After the incident hit the news headlines and travelled fairly quickly round the internet, the Civil Aviation Authority was quick to tell people that this type of event was exceedingly rare. And judging by the number of incidents that have occurred in the last year – just thirty five – they are perfectly right to state this.
What’s more, it is even rarer for one of these chunks to actually hit someone. Five people have been unlucky enough to have been hit by falling ice from an aeroplane in all of the past twenty years put together. So we aren’t likely to see many more news stories like this for quite a while – no matter whether they are from the region of Bristol Airport or not.
We may never know whether a plane from Bristol Airport was responsible for this particular incident. It isn’t something that is under the control of the pilot anyway – it is the conditions that result in something like this happening. A tiny leak from the plane could have resulted in it happening. And since the weather conditions and various other aspects of a plane’s flight path and trajectory also have an effect, the plane may not actually have been overhead at all.
Let’s just be grateful that the man in question wasn’t badly hurt. Other than some bruising, he was just fine. This magazine story from the BBC website reveals some of the details about the incident, as well as going into more detail about how it can happen. It’s an interesting read!