Pilot may have suffered heart attack before fatal plane crash

AN aerobatics instructor who died in a plane crash along with a student near Henley may have suffered a heart attack.

Emily Collett, 35, was flying with Thomas Castle when their biplane crashed near the B480, between Stonor and Middle Assendon, at about 2pm on August 24, 2019.

They had taken off in the single engine Pitts S-2A from an airfield in Berkshire 10 minutes before the crash.

An eyewitness described seeing the aircraft “nosedive out of the sky”.

A jury inquest, which began on Monday at Oxford Coroner’s Court, heard that Mrs Collett had had coronary heart disease.

Professor Simon Kim Suvarna, a cardiac pathologist, said an artery in her heart had narrowed between 80 and 90 per cent.

He said it was “certainly conceivable” that this condition could have led to a heart attack. But he said that this or Mrs Collett becoming incapacitated before the plane crashed could not be proved definitively.

Dr Olaf Biedrzycki, a forensic pathologist, said the injuries suffered by Mrs Collett and 30-year-old Mr Castle, from Market Harborough, Leicestershire, were “utterly catastrophic”.

He said that for someone to suffer a critical degree of coronary artery disease so early in life was “quite unusual”. Last year, a report by the Air Accident Investigation Branch concluded that Mrs Collett may have fallen ill at the controls during an aerial manoeuvre.

It said Mr Castle, who was sitting behind her, was experienced enough to have recovered the stricken aircraft but may not have realised something was amiss in time or may have become confused or panicked.

Mrs Collett had taught Carol Vorderman to fly the loop-the-loop on The One Show in 2017. After the crash, the presenter said: “Emily was an extraordinary young woman and pilot and my time with her in the air was nothing but a joy.”

Mrs Collett started flying in 2001 and had competed for more than a decade, winning the sports class national championships in 2007.

In 2014, she travelled to South Africa with her husband Mike as part of the British Aerobatics Team and won a silver medal.

The inquest continues.