Loughmacrory earlier

BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE

A man is still recovering from the trauma of having successfully landed a jumbo jet on his son’s Playstation.

Felix McVeigh, 38, an unemployed light bulb installer from Loughmacrory, took over the controls in an emergency with virtually no previous experience, after his 10 year old son Kieran vomited his lunch all over his legs whilst playing the game.

“I acted on instinct”, admitted the modest father. “I grabbed the joystick and immediately engaged the autopilot, checking that the flight coordinates correlated to the airport bearing. Jaysus, it wasn’t easy. My eyes were waterin’ from the stench of puke. I quickly fecked Kieran up to the bathroom and told him to get changed. I took a deep breath, and sat down to the challenge of my life. Landing the biggest passenger plane in the world”.

The game, ‘Wingthrust Simulator Extreme’, was given to young Kieran for his birthday in March. A Playstation 4 multi-platform game, it allows the player to fly the simulator controls of the massive twin-level Airbus A380 aircraft, taking off at a factually accurate San Francisco Airport and landing at an equally realistic London Heathrow.

“The psychological pressure of landing this computer-generated monster was huge”, said McVeigh. “It was all I could do to hold my nerve. At one stage I got so nervous the bowl of Doritos nearly fell off my lap. But by the time I was 6 virtual miles away and I pressed Button 2 to lower the landing gear, I knew there was no going back”.

McVeigh re-lived the final few moments before the successful landing, saying that he struggled in particular with modulating the auto-throttle to reduce height and speed, engaging the omni-bearing selector to the correct runway heading, and trying to Sky Plus ‘Cash In The Attic’ before it started.

However, since the incident McVeigh has suffered from sleepless nights, and believes he may be suffering from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder.

“There were 540 virtual passengers depending on me. Their lives were in my hands. You can’t comprehend that sort of mental pressure. And I’m not after recognition or anything like that, but to be honest the response from the  Loughmacrory community has been cat. Andrea Begley gets a hero’s welcome and a camera crew just for singing some songs. What do I get for saving the lives of hundreds of passengers? Feck all. Fair enough, the passengers didn’t actually exist, but that’s not the point, is it? What if they had, eh? Exactly”.

McVeigh compared his feat to that of US pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who was given the Freedom of New York City after safely landing an Airbus A320 on the River Hudson in 2009 after a flock of geese flew into its engines.

“Sullenberger did okay but in a way my job was even more difficult. He didn’t have to deal with his wife phoning half-way through the final approach asking what the feck he was doing sitting on his arse all day doing nothing and suchlike”.

McVeigh has made a request via the local Council to be given the ‘Freedom of Loughmacrory’, which entitles the holder to ridicule a shire horse in Welsh on a Tuesday.