Don't feel too bad about that bent metal you're responsible for. It appears that even the best have their bad days...
Test pilot Chuck Yeager has plane mishap
The Associated Press
Clayton -- Famed test pilot Chuck Yeager went off the runway and into a ditch Thursday after being caught in a cross wind while taxiing at a new airport community in northeast Georgia, where he was a guest of honor.
Yeager, 80, had a bump on his head but neither he nor his wife, Victoria, was seriously injured in the accident at Heaven's Landing, said Mike Ciochetti Jr., the developer of the community.
Chiochetti said Yeager's single-engine, two-seat military training plane had just landed and was taxiing in when the wind pushed it into a ravine.
"He was embarrassed," Ciochetti said. "Other pilots were watching, and they were humbled -- when something like this happens to the best."
Heaven's Landing is honoring Yeager and other World War II aces by naming its streets after them. A symposium was planned for 7 p.m. Friday at the Rabun County Civic Center.
Yeager was the first pilot to break the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, in a bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane over the Mojave Desert in California. The flight was depicted in the 1983 movie, "The Right Stuff," which made Yeager's name familiar to a generation of Americans unfamiliar with his aerial exploits.
http://www.heavenslanding.net/
Test pilot Chuck Yeager has plane mishap
The Associated Press
Clayton -- Famed test pilot Chuck Yeager went off the runway and into a ditch Thursday after being caught in a cross wind while taxiing at a new airport community in northeast Georgia, where he was a guest of honor.
Yeager, 80, had a bump on his head but neither he nor his wife, Victoria, was seriously injured in the accident at Heaven's Landing, said Mike Ciochetti Jr., the developer of the community.
Chiochetti said Yeager's single-engine, two-seat military training plane had just landed and was taxiing in when the wind pushed it into a ravine.
"He was embarrassed," Ciochetti said. "Other pilots were watching, and they were humbled -- when something like this happens to the best."
Heaven's Landing is honoring Yeager and other World War II aces by naming its streets after them. A symposium was planned for 7 p.m. Friday at the Rabun County Civic Center.
Yeager was the first pilot to break the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, in a bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane over the Mojave Desert in California. The flight was depicted in the 1983 movie, "The Right Stuff," which made Yeager's name familiar to a generation of Americans unfamiliar with his aerial exploits.
http://www.heavenslanding.net/