{"id":742186,"date":"2026-08-18T20:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742186\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T20:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:06:09","slug":"charity-campaigner-who-died-after-microlight-crash-was-filming-apple-tv-series-inquest-hears-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742186\/","title":{"rendered":"Charity campaigner who died after microlight crash was filming Apple TV series, inquest hears | Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"

A disability campaigner who was paralysed from the chest down died after her microlight crashed<\/a> while filming a TV series for Apple, an inquest has heard.<\/p>\n

Claire Lomas, 44, who was the first person to complete a marathon with the help of a \u201cbionic\u201d suit, died five weeks after the adapted aircraft she was travelling in \u201cveered off the runway\u201d and hit a large rock while landing in Amman, Jordan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The mother of two had become a noted campaigner for disability charities after a horse riding accident in 2007 left her paralysed.<\/p>\n

Louise Pinder, senior coroner for Rutland and North Leicestershire, told the inquest on Tuesday that Lomas suffered multiple severe traumatic injuries during the crash on 15 July and was taken to King Hussein medical centre, where she died on 22 August.<\/p>\n

The hearing, which took place at County Hall in Glenfield, Leicester, heard that at the time of her accident, Lomas had been wearing an Apple<\/a> Vision Pro headset and was in the process of filming content for the tech company to be used in a series promoting the product.<\/p>\n

Claire Lomas finishing the London Marathon in a bionic ReWalk suit in 2012. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau\/PA<\/p>\n

Lina Zilinskaite, a senior producer for Atlantic Productions, told the inquest that Apple had commissioned her company to create the series, and Lomas was one of several athletes selected to perform \u201csome sort of challenge or feat\u201d in different episodes.<\/p>\n

Zilinskaite told the court that Lomas had been \u201cvery enthusiastic and keen and excited about the opportunity\u201d and that she had obtained a licence to fly a microlight, the small aircraft she was piloting at the time of the crash, years before the series was commissioned.<\/p>\n

This was supported by Ben Ashman, a microlight designer and manufacturer, who said that Lomas had bought her own version of the aircraft between 2022 and 2023, which had been adapted to support her inability to use her feet.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the events leading up to the crash, Zilinskaite told the hearing that Lomas\u2019 flight had been scheduled for the day before but was cancelled \u201cbecause of strong winds\u201d. Zilinskaite also said that there had been test flights using the Vision Pro in the UK without Lomas, and that she had flown the microlight herself before the accident, albeit without wearing the headset.<\/p>\n

On the day of the flight, the inquest was told that Lomas had taken off from the runway in Jordan without issue and remained in the air for roughly 15 minutes before attempting to land, but that upon descending her \u201capproach was not quite straight on\u201d and that she \u201cveered off the runway\u201d before striking a large rock.<\/p>\n

The inquest heard that Lomas, who had completed the London Marathon over the course of 17 days in 2012 with the assistance of \u201cbionic\u201d legs, had been \u201cexcited\u201d to return to the UK after the crash and see her family, but that her health rapidly deteriorated after catching an infection which led to her death.<\/p>\n

Pinder said Lomas\u2019 family had raised concerns about the quality of care in the Jordanian hospital, but that it was not within her jurisdiction to investigate that formally.<\/p>\n

The inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A disability campaigner who was paralysed from the chest down died after her microlight crashed while filming a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-742186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}