AIR accident investigators told this week how a man risked his life to drag a pilot from the burning wreckage of a light aircraft.

The man had been walking his dogs near the Old Man of Mow, a folly in Mow Cop, when he saw the Slingsby Firefly plane smash into a field.

As he raced to the crash scene the aircraft's fuel tank exploded, but through the choking smoke he could see one of the pilots lying 10 feet from the plane.

He dragged him clear, and put out his smouldering clothes with his own jacket.

However the pilot was already dead, and the body of a second pilot was found in the remains of the aircraft.

Father-of-five Benoit Niclause and Francisco Cabellero were killed when their plane ploughed into a hillside beneath Mow Cop Castle last October.

They were on a training flight from the test pilot school at Woodford near Stockport when their plane crashed into a field after narrowly missing a church and electric cables.

The accident was investigated by the air accident branch of the Department of the Environment and Transport.

"There were no pre-impact failures or evidence of restrictions to the flying controls or aircraft systems of those parts of the wreckage that survived the post impact fire," said the department in its report.

The cockpit engine controls showed a setting of almost full power before the impact, and the propellor had been rotating.

The accident team could not determine why the plane was flown at low level for 28 minutes before the accident and on a track towards rising ground at Mow Cop.

Mr Niclause, aged 39, was a French test pilot who had worked at Woodford for 19 months as the chief pilot.

Mr Cabellero, aged 36, was an officer in the Spanish Air Force, who was about to complete a five-week performance flight test course.

He had 1,744 hours of flying experience, of which 200 were in flight testing.

Children at a local primary school saw the plane flying low over the school, and two other witnesses saw it 'rock from side to side' before 'pulling up into a loop' and dropping vertically.

The man who raced to the scene saw the aircraft clear a church tower by 25 feet, at which point the Slingsby was heading straight towards him.

"He could hear the engine, and there was no coughing or spluttering or sign of any engine malfunction," said the report.

"It then flew over nearby houses, narrowly missing electric cables 12 feet above the ground, and a second later pitched nose up and rolled before hitting the ground."

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