Ras Al Khaimah: A British expatriate was released from hospital on Monday with “a few cracked ribs and bruises” sustained from crashing his hang glider into a tree after swooping down into a rocky valley from a Jebel Jais.
David Willis, 78, brushed off the incident noting “that the tree broke his fall” after a gust of wind knocked his glider out of the sky at about 1,000 feet.
A flight-simulator instructor based in Dubai, Willis told Gulf News in a phone interview that he launched his “old-fashioned hang glider where you hang in an A frame” from 5,000 feet about half way up a 15-kilometre road on the side of the mountain.
“This was my first time in Jebel Jais.” Willis said, recounting that “I was hit by a gust of wind and it dropped me into a tree.”
The glider came down in Wadi Lahasa in Jebel Jais, about 200 metres away from the mountain road.
Amazingly, Willis said his glider was none the worse for wear.
“We packed it up and it seemed okay,” said Willis, who has lived in UAE for 11 years.
The scrape with danger has not dampened his love for hang gliding, he said, and he will continue to pursue the aerial sport he has done for decades.
“It was just one of those days,” Willis quipped.
Willis was rescued on Saturday when his glider stuck in a tree and fell from a height of 5,000 feet above sea level in Jebel Jais at around 12pm.
Mohammad Rashid Bin Arshid, Director of Saqr Hospital, told Gulf News that the British man was discharged from the hospital on Monday as his condition improved.
Arshid said “tests and radiology reports revealed that he had fractures in three ribs and one in lumbar vertebrae, in addition to scratches on the arms, and a slight bruise in a lung.”
Willis thanked a group of young men who witnessed the accident and phoned authorities about it.
He also thanked Saqr Hospital and the National Ambulance crew in Ras Al Khaimah who whisked him to Sqar Hospital.
