It starts out like the “Miracle on the Hudson”: An aircraft in trouble, a quick-thinking pilot and passengers who walked away from certain disaster. But unlike the story of US Airways Flight 1549, which crash landed into the Hudson River two years ago, this story has a sadder ending.
The pilot of a Goodyear blimp that caught fire and crashed at an airfield in Reichelsheim, Germany, last Sunday is being hailed as a hero. Michael Nerandzic, an experienced airship pilot with more than 18,000 hours of experience, and his passengers realized there was something wrong with the Goodyear blimp they were riding in when they heard a loud noise from the engine and smelled fuel.
Nerandzic brought the troubled ship, called The Spirit of Safety, down to about 6 feet off of the ground so his passengers, three journalists, could jump to safety. The blimp then quickly rose up approximately 165 feet in the air, caught fire and subsequently crashed, killing the pilot. Nerandzic’s wife, Lyndy, told Australia’s ABC Sydney that her husband knew the ship would rise up after the loss of the passengers weight, and that rescue workers found him still at the controls after the ship had crashed. He had apparently tried to steer the ship away from ground crews as it went down.
Tomorrow would have been Michael Nerandzic’s 53rd birthday. What caused the accident in the first place is being investigated but findings may not be available for several weeks.