29 November 2016
+VIDEO Sergeant Alan Robinson, an RAF aircraft engineer, has successfully soloed a Supermarine Spitfire – thought to be the first amputee pilot to have flown the Spitfire since WWII aces Douglas Bader and Colin ‘Hoppy’ Hodgkinson.
Alan lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident in 2011. He said, “A little over five years ago l woke up in a hospital bed to find my leg gone. The simple things previously taken for granted were to become the greatest challenge, such as walking.
“I was sure I wouldn’t be able to ride a bike again and thought that gaining a pilot’s licence would be out of the question. I thought being unable to achieve my dream would probably be a regret that would haunt me for the rest of my life.”
https://youtu.be/5hgwv1vOkZU
Alan is the first of two candidates in The Spitfire Scholarship, a private initiative supported by Prince Harry and the Royal Foundation’s Endeavour Fund and run by the Boultbee Flight Academy. Alan achieved his ambition with fewer than 150 flying hours in his logbook.
Matt Jones, managing director of Boultbee Flight Academy, the world’s only Spitfire training school, said, “We conceived the idea of the Scholarship three years ago and had immediate support from the Endeavour Fund and particularly Prince Harry. Picking the two successful scholars from the exceptional field of candidates that applied was very difficult indeed. Two years later and having been a part of his journey, to watch an initially extremely inexperienced pilot now soloing the Spitfire is one of the highlights of my own flying career – especially seeing what it meant to him.”
Prince Harry with the Boultbee team and Alan. [Photos: Andy Annable]
“Then, when the moment came, the emotion of five years of highs, lows, frustrations, successes, doubts, fears, the desire to make my family proud and honour the memory of my father, was all compressed into ten minutes of flying.
“It was utterly overwhelming and once the final switch had been turned off the tears came. It’s impossible to put the experience of this achievement into words. How it feels and what it means. Put simply I have achieved a childhood dream, but as a boy I could not have known a devastating accident would be the catalyst to that dream becoming a reality.”
