• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • Contact

Golf Hotel Whiskey

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts

GA aircraft cliff crash in Cornwall

Last Saturday at around 4.10pm, a small aircraft slammed into the cliffs above the water near Porthreath, on the North Cornwall coast, killing experienced pilot Andrew Stillwell-Cox and his border collie Archie upon impact.

At the time of the crash, visibility was described as being excellent and that Stillwell-Cox would have been able to not only see the cliff in time but he would have had plenty of time to also take evasive action to avoid them. After the accident, the Daily Mail quoted an inspector as saying:

One of the lines of inquiry the investigation is looking into is the possibility of suicide, based on a letter that was left.

However, police have also added that the aircraft could have suffered a mechanical failure.

Its not known for how long Stillwell-Cox had been a pilot as he was an ex-Royal Navy officer who saw active service in Sierra Leone and had served as a Leading Hand on the HMS Glamorgan during the Falklands War. Moreover and from the pictures shown of Stillwell-Cox in the Daily Mail and the other public information known about him, there does not appear to be any reason for him to commit suicide by flying his aircraft intentionally into a cliff.

Hence, perhaps the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) investigation will shed some light on what happened.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Matthew Stibbe
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He has an FAA CPL/IR and an EASA PPL/IR and sometimes flies a Cirrus SR-22. He also writes about wine at Vincarta and being a better manager at Geek Boss.
Bureaucracy must die eBook
Subscribe via RSS

Recent Posts

  • IATA Airport Abbreviations
  • Upcoming Concorde and Apollo documentaries
  • Lie Back And Think Of England: London To Austin On BA’s New 787 Dreamliner
  • Video: Parachuting from the edge of space
  • Hilarious preflight safety video for GA aircraft
  • San Francisco Airport at night – beautiful time lapse video
  • A practical jetpack (finally) takes off
  • A man in a hot air balloon realises he is lost
  • Pegasus House: The former HQ of the Bristol Aeroplane Company is restored
  • Vintage British aviation posters from the 1920-1930s

Copyright © 2023 Golf Hotel Whiskey. All rights reserved.