Claudia cheats death during a stunt flight

We have all seen the mostly smiling, cute face of super model and Bollywood actress Claudia Ciesla on Bigg Boss 3 on Colours. We also know that Claudia is a professional stunt pilot. What we don’t know is that the gorgeous beauty had an almost fatal accident and a near-death experience about a year ago – at the age of 20 - while training as a stunt pilot.

According to her publicist and manager Flynn Remedios, Claudia or CC as she is lovingly called by friends had just begun her training and it was her second flight. By then she already had her PPL or Private Pilot’s Licence, but flying stunt planes is an all together different ball game. Stunt planes are extremely lightweight or microlites are they are called in flying jargon, explains Flynn Remedios, adding that they have a very powerful engine. “Due to this combination, they can develop almost double the thrust and lift that a normal aircraft of that size can. This enables them to do summersaults and doubles and even take off or get airborne at shorter-than-normal duration. But controlling them is far more difficult and a new pilot can easily go wrong. A small error could mean life or death for the pilot.”

Claudia has also flown F-16s and other military aircraft at air shows in Germany. Of course the F-16s she flew were modified versions without any military entrapments. The planes didn’t carry any weapons, but never-the-less was an F-16 all right.

Explaining the incident, Flynn says, “Something went wrong and Claudia found the little micro lite stunt plane suddenly going out of control. She was not able to control the engine or get it to obey her. No matter how much she struggled with the joystick or flaps, the plane refused to obey her and CC found herself plummeting to the ground at about 200 kilometers an hour. She had reached ‘the point of no return’ or the minimum altitude where a stunt plane can recoup and get airborne again, when her frantic prayers were answered and the delinquent bird got back to normal and Claudia was able to guide it back to a proper landing.

The incident left her shocked and numb. At that time, Claudia had told a close friend that ‘when you are inches away from a near-sure death, you realise the importance of Life and know that it’s a gift to be cherished and respected. This incident also changed Claudia’s life to some extent. She got more active in social work and in India has plunged headlong into ‘doing her best for the poor, downtrodden and less fortunate.’

In recognition of her social work in India and her efforts towards resource mobilisation for the underprivileged, Claudia Ciesla was recently awarded the prestigious Karmaveer Puraskaar Award by iCongo on 26th November 2009. iCongo is the confederation of NGOs and the apex body representing major NGOs in India and the Khemka Foundation with partners like TISS, BCCI, NASSCOM, etc.