A BLACKBURN man escaped with his life after a flying lesson ended with his plane crashing into the side of a hill.

The 31-year-old was a passenger in the Cessna which came down in thick cloud and darkness around two miles outside Settle.

He is understood to have been undertaking a night-flying lesson under the tuition of Adrian Smith, a deputy senior air traffic control officer at Blackpool Airport.

Mr Smith contacted the control centre at 8.35pm to say he had crashed, but did not know their whereabouts.

It took rescue teams almost four hours to find the pair who were lying injured next to the plane’s crumpled wreckage.

And it was another four hours before rescuers had carried the men on a stretcher to a land ambulance at 4.15am yesterday.

Last night they were being treated in hospital.

The Blackburn man, who has not been named, broke his nose and an ankle. The pilot is said to have more minor injuries.

Clapham Cave Rescue duty controller Tom Redfern said: “There was a general feeling that the men were lucky to survive.”

“It looked like the craft had flown straight into the side of the steep slope just below the summit.

“The pilot had become totally lost in the thick cloud and darkness and he flew the plane straight into the mountainside.”

The crash happened near Ingleborough, one of the three peaks in the Yorkshire Dales between the villages of Wham and Rathmell.

Settle and Gisburn Forest are around two miles away from the remote location.

The Blackburn man was taking a lesson with Westair Flying School, which is based at Blackpool Airport, on Monday night.

John Hobday, flying school manager, said: “There was an incident last night where one of our aircraft carrying a student and a instructor was involved in a crash.

"We are now investigating the circumstances surrounding the accident.”

Mr Redfern said it was like ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’.

He said: “He contacted the police using his mobile phone but he had no idea which hillside he was on.”

Meanwhile, a 12-man team from Kendal Mountain Rescue were also called.

Mr Redfern added: “We thought the plane had veered towards the Leck Fell, but it then became apparent they had come down into Yorkshire so we returned to base.”

The RAF eventually narrowed the search to Ingleborough after tracing the pilot’s mobile phone signal and the rescue teams were dispatched again along with two rescue dogs.

Mr Redfern said: “Because of poor visibility our ground team had to take on the search around the slopes of Ingleborough. We found them on the South East side 580 metres above sea level.

“They were sitting alongside the wreckage of the of the plane. The aircraft was completely mangled and it had folded up on itself.”

The men were treated at the scene before being taken down the hillside on stretchers in complete darkness.

After being transferred into a land ambulance at 4.30am and they were taken to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

Yesterday, the wreckage remained on the hillside. The Civil Aviation Authority and Air Crash Investigation have been informed.