cancel2 2022
Canceled
This is such a heartwarming story amidst all the doom and gloom in the world.
It’s over: Dave Sykes enjoys a hard-earned rest (Picture: Ross Parry)
Mr Sykes flew a distance of 11,714 nautical miles (21,694km) from England to Australia in four months. He left York on April 28 and arrived in Sydney this week, hovering past the world-famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
Mr Sykes, 43, who made the trip to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity, lost the use of his legs when he broke his back in a motorcycle accident in 1993. After flying into Sydney, he said: ‘I thought this is what I’ve planned two years for, this is the actual final flight of it all. I just couldn’t stop smiling.
'And then flying over the actual bridge, looking at all the people doing the bridge walk waving at me, that was something else.’
During his mammoth journey, Mr Sykes, who took up microlighting in 2000, flew over 18 countries, across cities, oceans and deserts, fighting through dust storms in Saudi Arabia and an electrical storm over Burma. He recalled: ‘There was a big flash and the aircraft shuddered with a lightning strike at the side of me and it blew all the fuses out on the instruments. ‘It got to the point where I wasn’t scared any more, it was just about trying to survive it all.’
He took the trip after his friends made a wager that he could not fly all the way to Sydney. His microlight will be sent back to Britain by sea and Mr Sykes will take a passenger jet home. His flight came 81 years after British aviator Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia.
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/874091-paraplegic-pilot-flies-from-england-to-australia-in-microlight
It’s over: Dave Sykes enjoys a hard-earned rest (Picture: Ross Parry)
Mr Sykes flew a distance of 11,714 nautical miles (21,694km) from England to Australia in four months. He left York on April 28 and arrived in Sydney this week, hovering past the world-famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
Mr Sykes, 43, who made the trip to raise money for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity, lost the use of his legs when he broke his back in a motorcycle accident in 1993. After flying into Sydney, he said: ‘I thought this is what I’ve planned two years for, this is the actual final flight of it all. I just couldn’t stop smiling.
'And then flying over the actual bridge, looking at all the people doing the bridge walk waving at me, that was something else.’
During his mammoth journey, Mr Sykes, who took up microlighting in 2000, flew over 18 countries, across cities, oceans and deserts, fighting through dust storms in Saudi Arabia and an electrical storm over Burma. He recalled: ‘There was a big flash and the aircraft shuddered with a lightning strike at the side of me and it blew all the fuses out on the instruments. ‘It got to the point where I wasn’t scared any more, it was just about trying to survive it all.’
He took the trip after his friends made a wager that he could not fly all the way to Sydney. His microlight will be sent back to Britain by sea and Mr Sykes will take a passenger jet home. His flight came 81 years after British aviator Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia.
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/874091-paraplegic-pilot-flies-from-england-to-australia-in-microlight