The report by the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch gives previously unreported details about how 79-year-old Ian Dickinson brought the single-engine Piper Archer aircraft down into the Channel on 12 November last year after its electrics failed while en-route from Leigh-on-Solent in Hampshire to the couple’s home in Alderney.
In an attempt to avert a potentially worse disaster by trying to find land without the aid of the plane’s navigation system and before he ran out of fuel, Mr Dickinson had followed a Russian cargo ship and circled it before ditching the plane just 100 metres away to aid rescue.
In the moments before his death he handed his 78-year-old wife Anne-Marie a liferaft, unfastened her seat belt and opened the plane door for her to escape.
