At a cursory glance the Yuneec e430 looked like any other light aircraft, small and a bit frail looking. It was only when it was running, zipping along the old World War Two runway just before take-off, that other flying club members had informed me they noticed something odd. I had to explain to them, even people who were experienced pilots, that this particular aeroplane was electrically powered.
‘What happens when the batteries run out?’ This question was generally accompanied by a knowing laugh.
‘You have to land very quickly,’ was my standard reply. ‘In exactly the same way you have to if you run out of fossil fuel in an old-fashioned plane.’
I would often try to get the explanatory sentence in the conversation over the sound of laughter and nudging from this comically old-school audience. The flying club had many members in their late fifties, men with unusual facial hair, stout waistlines and great love and enthusiasm for their old planes.
The simple truth was that my little plane functioned well, it was very quiet and had proved incredibly dependable. Most importantly, and something I know I droned on about in the flying club bar, it was very simple to maintain. I was forever seeing people tinkering with their old fossil engines; they were always going a bit wrong, or misfiring, or packing up mid-flight.
The motor in the Yuneec e430 never went wrong, it didn’t matter how high I was flying, nothing needed adjusting, there were no high-altitude fuel mixture problems; it was very simple and straightforward.
As for recharging it, every airfield I landed on had a 70amp power outlet and I carried a very long extension cord in the snug cargo hold.
The plane was the most expensive thing I’d ever bought and of course Beth viewed it as a total waste of time and money. She hated flying. Every time I went anywhere in the plane she told me she expected never to see me again. How right she was.
She would often save light plane crash stories on her iPad and email me the links. She had only been in the plane once, soon after I bought it. Foolishly, on reflection, I’d not been able to resist showing off just a little by performing a couple of very gentle aerobatic turns. I mean that, really nothing intense – the Yuneec e430 is not built to compete in the Red Bull aerobatic competition. However, these manoeuvres resulted in her screaming non-stop until we landed. I want to reiterate that we landed very gently, very safely; everything was fine. I tried to calm her down. I said to her clearly, ‘Calm down, we’re okay, there’s nothing wrong.’
She climbed out of the plane and stormed off over the fields. I didn’t see her again for two days, making matters worse by not ringing anyone to find out where she was (well, I was very busy at the time and I knew she’d be fine once she calmed down).
I found out on her eventual return that she had walked to Chipping Norton, caught the bus to Kingham train station and then caught the train to London to stay with her fearsome mother. I was very relieved I hadn’t called her – her mother might have answered her phone. Nightmare.
After I took off that day, the day of the ‘What?’, I remember glancing at the battery indicator as soon as I was airborne – 93 per cent, plenty for what I was doing. The plane had a range of around a hundred and twenty miles on one charge and I was doing sixty at the most. The weather was reasonable for the time of year, slightly bumpy due to occasional cumulonimbus clouds above me but all in all, tip-top flying conditions.
I had read reports of some fairly hefty solar activity which could affect satellite navigation systems but as I was flying across well-known territory to an airfield I’d been to before I wasn’t that bothered about it.
I’d taken off from the flying club at Enstone in Oxfordshire. It was a Second World War airfield perched on a rolling hilltop just to the east of Chipping Norton.
I’d then headed north east to start with, giving me the opportunity to fly deliberately low over Jeremy Clarkson’s house. I waved but I don’t think anyone saw me. I then banked and headed due south toward Blackbushe airfield in Hampshire. I had a meeting in the nearby town of Basingstoke, in the small rented office of the UK arm of Tempus Engineering. I was freelance but very involved in the day-to-day politics of the company. I had a USB key fob in my top pocket with the entire project on it, encrypted obviously. This was a big renewable energy project with many millions already invested. It was probably the biggest ever renewable energy project, and made the Three Gorges dam look like a community power micro-generation installation.
We were going to build a deep-water multi-gigawatt power-generating installation off the coast of north-west Scotland, using the Gulf Stream. It was going to take ten years to complete but in theory at least, it would produce more energy than five nuclear power stations.
My plan for the day was very simple. The airfield was fourteen miles from the town centre, but that was no problem. Tucked into the small cargo area on the plane was a fold-up electric bicycle I’d helped design. I was going to land, plug in the plane for the return journey, zip through the Hampshire lanes to the meeting, plug the bike in while I was there, zip back to Blackbushe and get back home in time for tea.
Maybe even get back home in time to try and make up with Beth. As I flew I found myself going over the row as I remembered it. I must admit I couldn’t remember what started it. I wondered what I could do to make things easier for her. The problem was, in essence, that if I wasn’t working I was bored.
I wasn’t pinning all the blame on Beth – she wasn’t boring, I knew that. It didn’t matter whose company I was in, I just didn’t find other people that interesting. If other people were connected to projects, to concepts, to something I was working on, then I enjoyed that interaction. But just sitting with a person talking about nothing, anything, I suppose sitting with someone and talking about feelings…I’m not saying it’s wrong, bad or stupid, I just don’t know how to do it.
So if someone was talking to me about feelings, I’d start to play with something. I suppose I was a bit of a gadget fanatic; I never found gadgets boring, well, not for a while anyway. When I did get bored of them I put them in the big plastic box in my office and ignored them until they became interesting again about ten years later. Gadgets didn’t complain or give me dirty looks or storm off to stay with their mothers. I truly considered the possibility that I might be at fault, that when Beth tried to punish me with her absence and I didn’t notice, this might be very hurtful to her. Of course what I didn’t know then was that if I didn’t see Beth for more than about three or four days, then I would start to miss her.
I glanced at my iPad, which I used as an additional sat nav display. I’d even built a little aluminium holder to keep it in place during a flight. The plane came with a very good navigation system but I had logged so much data on Google Maps I liked to be able to check things as I flew over them.
I loved flying the Yuneec; it was so much quieter and smoother than the piston engine planes I’d learned to fly in. I sometimes flipped one side off my communications headphones just so I could listen to the low hiss of the wind flowing over the canopy – that was pretty much the only sound I could hear. Very little vibration from the engine and although not fast – the top speed was around 90 miles an hour – it would cruise along at that speed for ages, no problem.
I scanned the horizon. It was a beautiful clear day and I could see for miles.
My attention was caught by a fairly large cloud formation in my flight path, which seemed to be sitting lower than the small puffs of cloud higher up. I had checked the weather reports before I left and there was no mention of storms, but this did look decidedly storm-like. I could clearly see Didcot power station beneath the cloud – the power station was a very good waypoint due to the height of the chimney.
I knew that Didcot didn’t pump that kind of smoke out of the very tall chimney; it had been converted from coal burning to natural gas so that wasn’t what had caused it. It wasn’t a storm cloud, jus
t an unusual formation, and it was directly in my route. I decided to reduce my altitude and fly beneath it. The plane would happily cruise along at 10,000 feet, but I often flew lower. I knew I wouldn’t be disturbing anyone having a snooze in their back garden as the plane made no more noise than a glider.
I do remember distinctly feeling the plane rise a little as I started to fly beneath the cloud. Looking down I could see hard shadows being cast by trees and buildings. Nothing unusual, you might think – it was a sunny day – but the sun was already high in the sky and the cloud was big and dense; it should have cast a shadow. I couldn’t see one. It was as if there was no cloud, but when I looked up, there was definitely a major cloud above me. I could see no sign of the sun.
Wisps of cloud whipped past the windscreen. The plane wasn’t fast, but the cloud seemed to be slipping past me at a much greater velocity. I checked the sat nav. According to the display I was heading in the right direction, everything seemed in order but I did feel a little uneasy. In all my flying experience I’d never seen anything quite like this cloud.
I glanced out of the side window again expecting to see fields, the main line from London to Reading, motorways, housing estates. I saw only grey mist. I felt the plane jolt a little and I gripped the controls tighter; something unusual was definitely going on. I quickly glanced behind me. The rear window afforded a view of the tail and everything seemed fine.
Fine that is except I was now completely surrounded by thick cloud when I had made deliberate efforts to fly below and avoid it. I could see nothing in any direction. Glancing at the sat nav screen again, I felt slightly reassured. I was at 1,800 meters, cruising at 113kph in a south-south-easterly direction, just as I should have been. The only potential hazard for miles was the main chimney at Didcot power station, but I’d clearly seen it before I went into the cloud and that was only 300 meters tall; I was well above it.
Another sudden and unexpected movement, more of a violent sway, and boy did I grip those controls tightly. I’d flown through much worse storms than this but I still cursed under my breath. I should have gone around the wretched cloud.
I heard the quiet note of the engine rise and fall, and then saw to my great alarm that the map on the built in sat nav was spinning around. This was not good. I could sense that the plane was flying in one direction – I wasn’t spinning out of control, which was what the sat nav was telling me. I glanced down at the iPad. The map had frozen and I could see the little spinning symbol at the top of the screen – the map app was awaiting more information.
I peered ahead and thought I saw something in the mist. By now the sat nav was behaving completely irrationally, slowly turning and giving me no indication of speed or altitude.
The cloud appeared to be thinning and I saw a ray of sunlight.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ I remember saying, but as the phrase was leaving my lips I pulled the controls hard to the right. There in front of me was something I can confidently say I had never seen before. A thin blue line, like a laser beam, but more blue than anything I’d ever seen. Like a crack in the cosmos, or a blue light coming through a partially open door seen from a darkened room.
‘Jesus wept,’ I remember saying as I wrenched the controls, making the plane bank and dive more violently than I had ever done before. The engine revs reached maximum pitch and I experienced the unmistakable tingling sick feeling of expected impact and instant death.
The world opened up beneath me, suddenly and in incredible detail. Bathed in sunlight, a wide-open landscape of green, like an ocean of deep green. It was trees, so many trees stretching on for ever. In amongst the foliage I could pick out the occasional roof of a house. What I was seeing made no sense. I should have been looking at dense suburban Didcot, or railway yards, or the bloody power station, not some unnamed forest.
I levelled out at what I guessed to be around 500 meters. I could see well ahead; there were no hazardous objects in my path.
I glanced at my iPad and could see immediately it had no signal. The word ‘searching…’ was clearly visible top left, the map was utterly motionless and the blue indicator dot giving my position hadn’t moved at all since I last checked.
‘Fucking piece of Apple shit,’ I spat out. ‘I really need you now. Where the bloody hell am I?’
The plane flew true and steady, and that was when I first remember seeing the battery indicator. I thought everything had gone wrong. It was reading 100 per cent. It wasn’t 100 per cent when I’d taken off – I seemed to recall it had said 93 per cent. I tapped the indicator panel, knowing it was pointless tapping digital displays, but I didn’t know what else to do. When in doubt, tap something. I glanced back at the iPad – the battery indicator at the top of the screen also showed green, fully charged.
My mobile phone was in my top pocket and I pulled it out: full battery, no signal. I shook my head; this was turning into a bit of a nightmare.
I decided the best thing to do was find somewhere safe to land and try and work out what the hell was going on. But with no sat nav and a very unfamiliar landscape slowly unfolding beneath me, it wasn’t going to be easy.
I switched on the autopilot and picked up the iPad. I re-booted it, opened the sat nav app and waited while it scoured for satellite signals. I waited longer: nothing.
‘Bloody satellites can’t all be down. What the hell is going on?’
I pulled down my comms mic and pressed send on the control stick.
‘This is Yuneec 554, do you read me?’
It was only then that I realised I’d been listening to the low hiss of communications failure on my headphones ever since I’d come out of the cloud.
‘This is Yuneec 554, somewhere in the Didcot area. Do you read me, over.’
Nothing, absolute radio silence. I was partly relieved no one could hear me, as admitting I was ‘somewhere in the Didcot area’ was a sign of very serious pilot error. I should know exactly where I was at any given time. Everything on the digital indicator told me the comms were working, the plane was working, the batteries were 100 per cent still, but there was no response.
‘What in planet fuck is going on?’ I said to myself.
I flipped off the autopilot and took the plane in a long slow bank to the left. I was cursing and goggle eyed, heart rate off the spectrum and going like a strimmer motor. What hove into view was too big to be taken in. The thin blue line was there in front of me again. Surely no optical illusion of this size and solidity was possible – this looked physical and real, and yet it just couldn’t be. It was a glowing thin blue line stretching from the earth beneath me up into the sky. It had no discernable end point; it was just a straight electric blue line, like someone had Photoshopped it onto a real landscape. I glanced down to my left as I banked, seeing an unusual industrial complex where the blue line came to a halt. Some stainless steel pipe-work and small buildings, like nothing I’d seen before. I knew I was quite near the Culham laboratories but I’d visited the complex a few years previously and seen nothing like this installation on the site.
I flew due south, now only using a compass which was embedded into the cockpit display panel. Ahead of me I could only see forest, but there was no forest of this size near Didcot power station. But then there was no Didcot power station either. I must be somewhere else, but I knew I hadn’t been flying long enough to get anywhere else.
The ground below me was so well organised and tidy it almost looked like France, but there is no way I could have got to France – my batteries wouldn’t have lasted long enough. Although for some reason, even though I’d now been flying for over an hour, the batteries were still reading 100 per cent.
‘What if the storm’s shagged up the electronics?’ I said to myself. I considered the possibility of a major short in some connection causing the battery-monitoring software to flip to 100 per cent regardless of the actual state of the batt
eries. I knew I had to land, and fast.
To my right a patch of colour caught my eye; it was yellow, a field, a flat, smooth field. I banked to the right and reduced altitude in order to get a better look. As I approached the field I could see people on the ground, three people standing around a tractor and trailer. One of them was waving at me – they could see me. For some reason that reassured me. I felt so weird that the fact that someone could see me made me feel like I was still alive.
I scanned the ground. It was yellow because it was a field of oil seed. Not really a suitable landing area – oil seed grew a lot higher than nicely mown grass, but I couldn’t see anything resembling a field anywhere else. I hoped that as the plants were still yellow they would be fairly soft, the stems snapping easily, not the stiff harsh plants they became just before harvest.
I could sense the direction of the wind and banked the plane again until I was flying into it. I reduced height again and slowly approached the field. The small group of people I’d passed earlier were clambering into the trailer of their tractor; it looked like I might get a welcoming party.
I slowed the plane as much as I dared before I brought it down. The landing was violent, uncomfortable, but thankfully very brief. The prop scythed its way through the yellow plants, the windshield went momentarily yellow; the oil seed slowed the small machine very quickly. When I finally came to a stop I sat back in my seat and only then became fully aware of just how tense I’d been. I’ve had a few bumps and scares in my flying career, but nothing remotely like this.
I pulled out my phone. I wanted to call Beth – suddenly I was experiencing emotions, I was actually having feelings. I needed something this bloody dramatic to realise that I did actually need this woman, someone I was connected with. I wanted to tell her I was okay and apologise for being such a numpty at breakfast time.
No signal.
I glanced out of the right-hand window and saw in the distance the tractor making its slow way through the field of bright yellow plants.
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