Pilot Free Aircraft

That wouldn’t make your day!!

He was lucky In a lot of these situations, the prop swinger gets killed.
Having read Air Accident reports previously, I recently had to swing the prop because of battery failure in my Cherokee. There's no way I'd have done it unless I had an experienced pilot sitting in the aircraft holding the brakes and ready to cut power if anything went wrong and I was also ready to run sideways!

A lot of vintage aircraft have to be hand swung and are mostly flown solo with no-one around to help out. If you follow the correct procedure it will minimise the risk. The tiger moth at our strip has no brakes at all and needs chocks with a rope when starting, as does the luton major. Does look odd though but you cant always force someone else to tag along just to turn the prop or press the brake