A PILOT was forced into a crash landing after the cockpit canopy of his plane started to open at 1,000ft.

The aircraft overturned when it landed in a field near Selby last year and was written-off - but the pilot escaped with only minor injuries.

The 39-year-old man held a private pilot’s licence and had 102 hours of flying experience under his belt.

He was flying alone in a small two-seater aircraft in September 2016 when he realised the plane’s canopy was starting to open.

An official report by the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB), published last week, shows that while the aeroplane was written-off in the emergency landing, the pilot himself was left with only minor injuries.

On September 6, the pilot had taken off from Sherburn in Elmet airfield in a two-seater Aero AT-3 R100 plane, the report says.

Soon after take-off he noticed the front-hinged canopy over the cockpit had started to open on one side.

He tried to “reseat” it and planned to land, but when he got to 1,000ft the canopy lifted again by 10 to 12 inches and the pilot had told investigators he had started to worry that it would open even further, and would start to affect the aircraft’s handling.

“There was also a ‘great increase in wind and noise within the cabin’ and the aircraft began to descend,” the report adds, so the pilot held on to the canopy and decided to land in a bare-earth field spotted nearby.

“During the landing roll the aircraft overturned, resulting in it being damaged beyond economic repair and causing minor injuries to the pilot,” the AAIB document says.

The report adds that a similar accident happened to another Aero AT-3 R100 in 2012 and both the Civil Aviation Authority and the Light Aircraft Association planned to publish articles about the locking mechanisms on the plane, and the need for thorough understanding and checks before flights.