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Journalism of Courage
A viral video shows the courage and skill of a Dutch woman pilot who successfully brought her small aircraft to a safe landing after its canopy unexpectedly burst open and shattered mid-flight.
The caption of the video read, “Dutch pilot Narine Melkumjan shares moment the canopy suddenly opened mid-flight on her Extra 330LX. Despite the shock of the incident she landed the aircraft safely.”
Narine Melkumjan shared the nail-biting video on Instagram three days ago. In the post, she explained her ordeal, “A couple of years ago during my second aerobatic training flight of that day, on a very hot summer day, the canopy of the Extra 330LX that I was flying opened in flight and shattered.”
In the video, Narine Melkumjan is shown desperately holding onto the controls right after the protective canopy broke. She looked distressed, struggling to keep her eyes open against the wind, guiding the two-seater plane back down to the ground.
Watch the video below:
She elaborated, “As you can see from the video, it was a challenging experience that could have been avoided if I had made a proper visual check before taking off. The canopy locking pin had never gone into the locked position, and I failed to notice it during my checks.”
Melkumjan also acknowledged making the mistake of attending the training camp shortly after recovering from Covid without allowing her body adequate time to regain full strength. Additionally, flying without any eye protection added to the challenges she faced during the flight.
Noise, breathing difficulties, and impaired visibility made the flight a distressing experience for Melkumjan. It took her nearly 28 hours to fully recover her vision.
“Aerodynamically, I’ve experienced some buffet and controllability challenges. Probably the most difficult part was to keep the power in, thus trading my vision and breathing for kinetic energy,” she wrote. “Although due to all the noise it was difficult to hear what my coach was saying on the radio, one thing I’ve heard loud and clear was just keep flying.”
Melkumjan ended her post hoping that her story would serve as a cautionary tale for pilots. She regrets that it took her so long to share the video. “It’s not easy to put my vulnerabilities out there for the world to see. However, I have come to realize how important it is to be transparent about our shortcomings and the lessons we learn along the way,” she signed off.
On X the video, shared by @aviationbrk, received over 3.1 million views, while it got only 6,400 views on Instagram.
One X user wrote, “Her poor eyeballs! She must have been doing a couple of hundred km/h..” Another user said, “That was professional and calm.” And this user wrote, “so calm under pressure. just wow..”
