A British airline pilot was killed when his glider slammed into a rocky hillside at 150mph while he was celebrating his 60th birthday with a solo flight.
Flybe airline captain Peter Reading, 60, had tried to climb and was believed to have stalled and gone into a spin. He was unable to pull up the nose before crashing on Monday.
The father-of-two from Godalming, Surrey, had been on a gliding holiday with wife Ingrid.
He had launched from an airfield in a Jonker JS-1 Revelation that is capable of speeds of 175mph.
The previous day he had taken his 59-year-old wife up for a flight over the wild Karoo and South Africa’s biggest dam near Norvalspont in the Free State.
Rescuers raced to the scene but Mr Reading’s body was found among the wreckage. Gariepdam Gliding Club chairman Manni Voigt said the area was popular with British pilots.
“He is a very experienced glider pilot with over 60,000 flying hours under his belt and a further tragedy is that he had gone up to celebrate on his 60th birthday,” he said.
“We don’t know exactly what happened but it would seem he was flying too slow and lost lift on a wing and stalled and went into a spin.”
