[Jim Goose]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-0...-wheel/3204912

Plane crashes into NSW ferris wheel


A small passenger plane has crashed into a ferris wheel at a festival on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

Police say the plane crashed shortly after 10.00am (AEST) this morning at the Old Bar Festival at Taree.

Local officers say at least two people are trapped in the plane with children stuck on the the ferris wheel.

The plane is leaking aviation fuel and emergency services have been spraying the plane and wheel with foam.

The plane was taking off from the grass airstrip and failed to get enough altitude to clear the ferris wheel, which was recently placed at the southern end of the strip for the local festival.

Flyers from around the country have come to the area for the long weekend.

Lorraine was watching the plane take off from a viewing platform.

"He'd gone in and made a landing and then I heard him taking off again so I turned around to watch him come, because he was going up a pathway [that] took him over the top of the ferris wheel," she said.

"And as I turned around to watch him I thought 'Christ he's low, he's coming in low over that' and next thing bang he went straight into it.

"And the only thing that stopped anything else happening was a support bar of the ferris wheel - that sort of went in between the struts of the wing."

So someone in their infinate wisdom places a ferris wheel at the end of a runway???? (and the pilot is silly enough to take off while there is an obstruction?)