THE son of the captain who collapsed at the controls of a holiday airliner said his father died doing a job he loved.
A co-pilot safely landed the 220-passenger Britannia Airways Boeing 757 at Malaga airport in Spain after Captain Roger Attenborough, 54, had a heart attack during the plane's descent on Sunday afternoon.
Mr Royd Attenborough, who is also a trained pilot, said: ``It has come as a complete shock. The only consolation is that he died flying. It was a job he loved and it was all he ever wanted to do.''
Mr Attenborough went on: ``Dad was fit and well and passed all his six-month medicals with flying colours and we thought he would be looking forward to a long and healthy retirement.
``Fortunately, he died with no risk to the passengers thanks to the professionalism and training of his co-pilot.''
Captain Attenborough and his wife Nikki had one other son, Gordon, 21. The family live at Kempston near Bedford.
The captain had collapsed as the flight from Luton descended on its way into Malaga.
While cabin crew rushed to help him, the co-pilot landed the plane.
``We are all deeply saddened and shocked by this news and I know that many friends and colleagues of Captain Attenborough throughout the airline will wish to join me in offering condolences and deepest sympathy to his family,'' said Britannia managing director Roger Burnell.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article