A FATAL mid-air crash between two gliders near Lasham, south of Basingstoke, has revealed the need for such aircraft to be more visible to one another, an official accident report claims.

The accident happened on April 26 last year and resulted in the death of 68-year-old Alan Purnell, an experienced glider pilot from Fleet.

The pilot of the other glider - 45-year-old Graham Robertson from Ascot - managed to parachute from his plane to safety.

Both gliders had taken off from Lasham airfield and their wreckage crashed into fields and a garden shed near the A339.

Mr Purnell was declared dead at the scene as a result of multiple injuries and an inquest jury in September last year returned a verdict of accidental death.

In their report, which was released on Thursday, investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch of the Department of Transport say: "It appeared that neither pilot saw the other glider in time to initiate any effective avoidance manoeuvre."

The report says that when Mr Robertson - in a Skylark glider - saw Mr Purnell in his Ventus glider, his instinctive reaction was to start descending, but he was not sure whether he had been able to take any action before the collision.

The report recommends that further visual and electronic measures are adopted to make gliders more detectable in the air and says that the Civil Aviation Authority is best placed to oversee their introduction.

The investigators say both pilots were entitled to be where they were in the air and would have been relying on the principle of "see-and-avoid".

While the weather on the day of the accident may have been changeable, it was still suitable for flying, the report says.

However, it still recommends that the British Gliding Association review its operational advice to pilots flying in "marginal conditions".

First published: Monday, May 16, 2005