A couple have spoken of their relief after a glider came within feet of crashing into their house.

Mike and Eileen Baber were at their Bicester home when they were startled by a loud noise caused by an ASW 19 single-seat glider crashing into their garden hedge.

The pilot was attempting to land at Bicester Gliding Club when the aircraft came down next to the A4421 Buckingham Road at about 5.30pm on Thursday.

Mike Baber, 72 of Thompson Drive, had been watching England beat Sri Lanka in the 20/20 cricket World Cup when he heard the crash and went outside to see the glider’s wing tip on top of his garage.

He said “I just heard this loud thud.

“I am very pleased the pilot did not hit anything on the Buckingham Road and we are very lucky as well that there is no damage to any of our cars or to our house.

“Everybody has been very lucky because it could have been so much worse.”

Although the glider was badly damaged with the cockpit virtually in pieces, the pilot, a 49-year-old man from Maidenhead, was uninjured in the crash.

However, after surviving the crash unscathed, he was driven back to Bicester airfield where he stood on broken glass and had to be taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for treatment.

Mrs Baber, 63, said: “It was just incredible. I was sitting in the study at the computer and suddenly heard a loud clatter and thought ‘what on earth is that?’ “I went outside and saw the tail end of the glider sticking up over one of our cars.

“The pilot clambered out, he was in a state of shock but he said, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m so sorry’.

“We do see the gliders coming over quite low and wondered how close they’d come to us one day.”

An investigation into the cause of the accident has been launched and has been delegated to the British Gliding Association by the Air Accident Investigation Branch.

The pilot is a member of the Windrushers Gliding Club which uses Bicester airfield.

A member of the club, who declined to be named, said: “It was a privately owned glider coming into land back here at Bicester, but it overshot.

“We are very relieved he is unhurt and no-one else was involved in the crash.

“It’s a bit ironic he got out of the glider completely unhurt, but cut his foot on a broken bottle.

“Gilders are very safe. There are thousands of glider flights every week in the UK and this was very much an isolated incident.”