Worker dangles from i360 Brighton amid training exercise

Worried onlookers watched as the woman blew around in the strong winds on Brighton seafront on Friday morning.

Charlotte Fitzgerald, 51, witnessed the incident while walking her dog at about 9am.

She said: “Me and my mum originally through someone was abseiling down.

“But then we thought ‘no that person has not moved’ – she seemed stuck halfway down and we started to feel worried.

“She was about halfway up the thing, which is 450 feet tall, in the freezing cold and wind.”

Ms Fitzgerald said another person on an abseil then came

to help the woman down to the ground.

She said: “The whole thing in total was around an hour.

“When the woman came down she just laid on the floor for a really long time and then sat up with her head in her hands.

“It must have been terrifying.”

Video from the scene shows the moment the worker dangled from a harness hundreds of feet in the air.

A spokeswoman for British Airways i360 said: “On Friday October 23, we undertook one of our regular internal pod evacuation training exercises with a small group of staff volunteers.

“We plan and implement all scenarios to allow our team to be fully competent should visitors

ever need to be evacuated from the pod.

“These exercises are an essential part of our overall health and safety procedures.”

The attraction was closed on March 19 amid the coronavirus crisis.

However, it reopened on July 4 with safety measures in place, including temperature checks at the door.

The i360 plays host to many abseiling feats for charity.

Nurses were among the brave people who abseiled from 450ft up to raise money for a children’s hospital charity last month.

The iDrop abseil at the i360 in September was the first fundraising event organised by Rockinghorse Children’s Charity since March.

More than £13,000 was raised for the charity, which is the official fundraising arm at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and a vital supporter of the neighbouring Trevor Mann Baby Unit.