Wayne Winters, owner of a family-run airstrip, examines a damaged ultralight plane which crashed south of Calgary on July 11, 2009. (Nadia Moharib, Sun Media)

INDUS -- Seconds after the wing of his newly minted plane sheared off, it plummeted nose-first to Earth, the pilot still strapped inside the ultralight aircraft.

And when witnesses rushed to his side early yesterday morning, the pilot -- identified by friends as 46-year-old Roy Breaton -- was alive and talking, surviving the crash which left his plane a mangled mess.

Calgary EMS spokesman Adam Loria said the pilot's condition was initially listed as critical but later upgraded.

"Based on the way the plane was mangled, he is fortunate to have survived," Loria said at Indus Winters Aire Park southeast of Calgary where the plane went down on a grassy runway strip about 9 a.m.

"You never want to see anything like that happen," added fellow pilot Garry Van Eeerden. "But in this case, he'll live to fly another day."

Breaton's friends said after spending hundreds of hours to build the Hummel Ultra Cruiser from scratch, he took it on its maiden voyage Friday, flying two successful circuits.

Yesterday, however, things fell apart. RCMP Const. Bradford MacSwain said the aircraft "experienced a structural failure in response to a strong wind gust while performing routine landing and take-off manoeuvres."

Wayne Winters, with the family-run airstrip off Hwy. 22X, said he was flying with a student when the death-defying scenario unfolded.

Some witnesses said the plane was as high as 150 metres when trouble struck, while others put it at 30 metres.

"On take-off, the wing just folded up on him," Winters said. "He just fell out of the sky and it just dug in."

A friend watching from the ground rushed to the pilot's side, pulling him out of the tiny, crumpled one-seater cockpit fearing leaking fuel might catch fire, said Winters, who wasn't far behind.

"I was relieved, pleased to see him alive," Winters said.

"He is going to be OK, had it been any higher there would have been no way possible."

The group kept talking to the pilot, who was lucid but in pain -- with cuts and bruises, fractured ribs and a collapsed lung -- until help arrived.

"His face was banged up but he was ugly in the first place," Winters joked.

Winters said the pilot made the plane based on a U.S. design which are often much lighter, less structurally sound and require a maximum 254 lbs., compared to Canadian designs which are typically "several hundred pounds heavier and structurally beefier."

He said Breaton was wearing a seat belt and crash helmet but didn't play down how lucky he was to have survived.

"You say your prayers on the way down -- it's the only thing you can do or pull a parachute, but you better be fast," he said.

NADIA.MOHARIB@SUNMEDIA.CA