Qazi Ajmal fatal accident MTO Sport in Balochistan, Pakistan

[Abid]

I heard bad news on Facebook that the only Gyroplane instructor in Pakistan died recently in his MTO Sport while on a record attempt flight when he entered mountainous area of province of Balochistan. His name was Qazi Ajmal and he was one of the main instructors for AutoGyro dealership in Saudi Arabia. He had trained a lot of gyroplane as well as trike pilots in Saudi Arabia. His family (father) was a pioneer of ultralight trikes in the 70's and 80's in Pakistan flying and making trikes there.

The accident happened at night time supposedly. The highest peak in the area is 7500 feet MSL. By Pakistani standards that a baby mountain. Not exactly sure where his crashed debris was located. Gyroplane was a MTO Sport 912ULS.

May he RIP.

Missing pilot's body found three days after his gyrocopter crashed in Balochistan

Qazi Ajmal had flown from Karachi three days ago, but his small lightweight aircraft went missing when it entered Balochistan

www.geo.tv

 

[DonBishop]

It is always sad and sobering to hear of another gyro pilot crashing.

 

[Martin W.]

.

Sorry to hear this news.

We may not know if the mountain flying had anything to contribute to the accident , but it is something we should consider ... there are plenty of "mountain gremlins" which have downed many experienced pilots .

For that reason a specialized Mountain flying school was established in British Columbia Canada and thousands of pilots from all over the world were trained since 1980.

Chief instructor Jan Rustad headed the school for 40 years and recently passed away from cancer age 75 ..... here is an article for anyone interested in such things .....

Jan Rustad remembered

The man who was lovingly dubbed “The Yoda of Mountain Flying,” has died after a short battle with cancer.

www.pentictonherald.ca

 

[DavePA11]

Very sad. Too many accidents. Winds around the mountains here in western Colorado and Wyoming can have very strong gusts and the down drafts can be very strong. Sounds like we will never know in this case.

 

[Abid]

Very sad. Too many accidents. Winds around the mountains here in western Colorado and Wyoming can have very strong gusts and the down drafts can be very strong. Sounds like we will never know in this case.

I knew Qazi Ajmal via the web only. He was no stranger to mountain flying. Flying in mountains in Pakistan make North American mountains look petite. The place is called the The Roof of the World with 108 peaks above 7000 meters (23000 feet) and the largest number of glaciers and glacial ice outside of Antarctica. But this area was not really those high mountains.

Unfortunately we do know a bit. I saw some reporting from there where it is said that the pilot contacted his brother via radio Mayday call at around 7:30 - 8:00 pm and told him he can't see much and visibility is getting worse and he is at around 1600 feet altitude before his gyroplane supposedly collided with the side of the mountain. He did not want to fly over the sea so he had turned back to try and come back to land but with not having any visibility ran into a 4000 foot mountain next to the sea.

He did not have experience flying at night and was actually forced to fly at night due to an emergency to get somewhere it seems. I wish he would have just stayed put on the ground at night, Very sad

 

[Tyger]

Hmm, whatever his emergency was for flying at night in mountains (in iffy weather?), I guess it wasn't worth it. 😐
I thought it was Tibet that had the moniker "roof of the world".

There is some good stuff re mountain flying on this site: https://www.mountainflying.com
But what you might notice is that the mountain-flying expert/author who created the site is no longer with us...

 

[Vance]

In my opinion flying at nights in lightly populated mountains is a great way to get spatial disorientation and have controlled flight into terrain.

It can be very difficult to identify the horizon and landing lights are simply not enough to identify obstacles in time to avoid them.

I hope people will recognize a lesson here.

 

[JETLAG03]

We are not allowed night flights in France, when I suggested to my instructor I wish we could, he paused and then asked
"how do you confirm the safety of a landing site in case of engine out at night?"

Night flying does not seem to enticing to me anymore.

 

[Tyger]

Yes, it's pretty hard to "confirm" a safe emergency landing site at night, but of course this also applies to IFR flights, and there are certainly plenty of those.

I have not flown very much at night, but when I did my required (for PPL) night training we flew mostly along the interstate. These major federal highways are usually fairly well lit (either by streetlamps or headlights), have no roadside power lines, and have relatively few power-line crossings. We did the required night landings at two airports which were each within gliding distance of that interstate.

It seems to me that night flying is mostly for when you have to be somewhere by a certain time. Probably this was the case for Mr Ajmal that day.
If you are flying mainly for fun, and for the views, you will probably not be doing much night flying (although flying just after sunset on a beautiful day can be spectacular).

 

[loftus]

One sobering statistic regarding night flying in general that I have read is that fatalities are twice as high as daytime; makes sense of course.

 

[Tyger]

I agree it's definitely higher risk, and that does seem obvious. I think night driving (& boating, biking, hiking) is higher risk too.
My primary CFI never flies at night these days. I had to get my night flight training from someone else.

 

[BEN S]

We live in a comfy world.
An emergency that requires one to fly mountainous terrain at night in a place like that could have been a "personal security" issue... like, the rebels are coming!"
I'm just speculating, but a high timed CFI obviously knows the risks and he deemed his emergency to be more dire then the flight risk.

 

[Abid]

We live in a comfy world.
An emergency that requires one to fly mountainous terrain at night in a place like that could have been a "personal security" issue... like, the rebels are coming!"
I'm just speculating, but a high timed CFI obviously knows the risks and he deemed his emergency to be more dire then the flight risk.

Yes he was told to get out of there because there was a risk of some separatists coming. In fact that never happened but he took off in a non-night flight equipped gyroplane with no horizon and pitch black darkness to deal with. He tried to come back to land after finding himself disoriented and hit the mountain

 

[loftus]

Abid, you mentioned that he was flying some type of record attempt, what type or record, do you know?

 

[Jean Claude]

Even birds refuse to fly at night. Except for some specially equipped for night vision