Politics can be a contact sport but in the Netherlands over the weekend, it led to a mid-air collision between two single-engine planes carrying banners from rival political parties over a beach in Wassenaar. In fact and not only did the aircraft collide, they became stuck together in an unplanned and unwanted coalition!
Apparently, the light aircraft pulling an ad for the Christian Democrats got too close to the single-engine Cessna with members of the Socialist Party whose landing gear got stuck on the wing other aircraft. The aircraft were able to shake free with the plane carrying the Christian Democrats banner forced to make an emergency landing on the beach (with a damaged wing) while the socialists landed safely at Rotterdam airport. No-one was hurt in the unfortunate incident.
There are two videos of the incident with this first video shot by a cameraman being posted on DutchNational.NL:
This second video appears to be from a cockpit recorder in one of the aircraft:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TvikTVUzYU&w=480]
Now we would like to ask our readers, especially any based in the Netherlands a simple question: Which party is to blame for the mess (as in the aircraft collision and not any other messes…), the Christian Democrats or the Socialist Party?!! Feel free to tells us in the comments section…
I got sick just from watching this. Damn scary.
What a bunch of idiots! Is there any other way to say it? It’s their own fault to flying so close to the other aircraft in the first place! I couldn’t even call this an unfortunate incident. It was an unnecessary incident!
I had seen the first video, but not the second one with the fixed cockpit camera. I can only imagine that the pilot had the plane on his right in sight, but did not see the plane that was left of it. The police engaged all three aircraft.
p.s. if you are ever get involved in some incident in Holland, it is not unwise to keep your mouth shut as much as possible to the police until you have spoken to a lawyer. Since a year or so the national police immediately gets involved and approaches aviation incidents immediately from criminal law perspective with the objective to prosecute someone, rather than to investigate a cause so people can learn from it. Earlier this year a Cessna 172 crashed. After the pilot died, the police dropped the investigation. There was noone that could be prosecuted anymore.