文章基本信息

标题：AIR WE GO ... HERO PILOT FLIES AGAIN
作者：Rosa Prince
期刊名称：Sunday Mirror
印刷版ISSN：0956-8077
出版年度：1998
卷号：Apr 12, 1998
出版社：Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd.

AIR WE GO ... HERO PILOT FLIES AGAIN

Rosa Prince

HERO pilot John Hackett is back in the air again, just days after saving the lives of the entire Leeds United football team.

Captain Hackett resumed his normal duties with Emerald Air this week, on an hour-long cargo flight from Belfast to Liverpool.

The rest of the crew of the Hawker-Siddeley 478 plane which was just 30 seconds away from exploding when Captain Hackett crash- landed it have also flown again.

Co-pilot Gary Lucas, 33, from Liverpool, chief stewardess Helen Dutton, 33, from Birkenhead, and Nicola Mee, 20, from St Helens, crewed separate flights a few days before Captain Hackett.

They had all been offered more time off, but asked to get back in the air again as soon as possible.

Father-of-two Captain Hackett, 61, of Newtown, Staffordshire, took time off from his duties only to be debriefed by crash investigators, and to watch Leeds' 3-1 victory against Chelsea at Elland Road last Wednesday as a guest of club chairman Peter Risdale.

Emerald Air spokes-man Bill Dale said: "You would expect that everyone in the crew would be apprehensive about flying after what happened, but there was no problem at all.

"Captain Hackett is not the sort of fellow to get nervous - he's a nuts and bolts sort of guy. The crew took the whole thing in their stride.

"They have regular crash practice anyway so they didn't see as a huge deal.

"It was just part of the job - nothing exceptional.

"They didn't want time off. Rather than sit thinking about it they all wanted to get straight back to it."

Captain Hackett saved the lives of the Leeds United team when one of the engines on his plane caught fire as it took off from Stansted Airport following their defeat at West Ham.

Ignoring text-book instructions to circle while trying to put out the fire, Captain Hackett took the plane back to the ground, landing just short of the runway.

Experts say if it were not for his quick thinking Leeds could have suffered a repeat of the 1958 Munich air disaster, in which eight of Manchester United's Busby Babes were killed.