84-year-old glider pilot rescued from tree after crash in New Hampshire
By Mike Sullivan
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BENTON, New Hampshire (WBZ) — An 84-year-old Vermont man crashed a glider plane into the White Mountain Forest on Sunday, and he lives to tell the tale. He was suspended 20-feet off the ground for several hours.
“I was supporting my weight with my hand holding onto one of the seatbelts, and I had to undo my lap belt because the lap belt was putting so much pressure on my abdomen that I couldn’t breathe,” said Henry Swayze, the pilot of the glider.
Swayze has been on 231 flights with a glider and had flown this route once before. He left from Post Mills, Vermont after being released 3,000 feet in the air from a tow plane. His glider traveled toward Haverhill, New Hampshire and onto Hogback Mountain.
It’s there that he caught an updraft of wind to gain altitude. When the sun hits the ground, a warm pocket of air will rise into the atmosphere. A pilot can circle in the hot air to rise the glider up without a motor. The rise in altitude at Hogback Mountain allowed him to carry on to Cannon Mountain.
“If I have a mile from where I have to land vertically, I can go 40 miles without any more lift,” said Swayze.
On the return, he planned to hit the updraft again, so he could glide home. Instead, the weather changed at Hogback Mountain, and a downdraft sent him gliding downward.
“Caught in a downdraft”
“I got myself low and caught in a downdraft that put me in the trees. A nice, gentle landing in the trees, nothing particularly shaken up about that,” adds Swayze calmly. “It dropped me nose down, and I got stopped by branches of trees that supported me that way, but it is possible those branches could have broken, and I would have nose-dived straight down. If that happened, I would have ended up with broken legs or something.”
Swayze was trying to support himself on the control panel of the plane, but he was afraid it would break. With his seatbelt unclipped, all he had to hold onto was a makeshift sling from the seatbelt and the parts of the plane he clung to.
“[Control panels] aren’t designed to hold body weight, so I was trying to take as much weight off of that as possible because I didn’t want that to collapse and dump me out,” said Swayze.
Pilot stranded for 3 hours
As he hung there, Swayze used Google Maps to send a location pin to 911. After three hours, emergency crews were able to get him out of the glider. He was so exhausted from holding himself in place, that he struggled to walk out of the woods.
“Gliding is as safe as you want to make it. If you want to be cautious, you can never get yourself in trouble, but maybe not go very far while enjoying yourself,” said Swayze, who plans to fly again. “If you want to follow a passion, and stretch the envelope, it’s possible to get in trouble.”
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