A GLIDER pilot was decapitated yesterday when his aircraft hit a barbed-wire fence in northern NSW.
The 38-year-old Sydney man was learning to fly and was being towed by another plane when his glider was prematurely released, sending him into the fence.
The accident occurred at the Keepit airstrip, near Tamworth, on the NSW northern slopes.
A NSW police spokeswoman said the man, who was in the front seat of the glider, was killed instantly when the aircraft crashed into barbed wire at the end of the airstrip.
The instructor, who was in the second seat behind the victim, received only minor injuries to his arm and was treated by ambulance officers at the scene.
A spokesman for the Lake Keepit Soaring Club, Geoff Neely, said the glider had been linked via a 60m cable to a propeller plane and was being towed down the runway. He said both the plane and the glider had lifted off but the pilot of the plane had been forced to release the cable because the plane was in danger of hitting trees at the end of the runway.
“If for any reason you’re not climbing, either pilot can release the cable,” Mr Neely said. “The power aircraft, relieved of that drag, has a bit of a chance of climbing away.”
The propeller plane recovered and landed safely.
The glider made a controlled landing on the runway but was unable to stop as it ran off the end of the runway and slammed into the fence.
The dead man’s instructor said thunderstorms in the area may have played a part in the death.
The accident is the third fatal glider crash in NSW in six months. In September, a 48-year-old pilot died when his plane crashed in southern NSW, and in August, a father and son were killed when their motorised glider crashed in a paddock at Catherine Field, in Sydney’s southwest.
Additional reporting: AAP