An airline pilot is claiming more than £100,000 in damages following a crash she says left her brain damaged and wrecked her career.

Carolyn Bourne, 35, of Newport Road, Burgess Hill, is taking her battle for compensation to the High Court, saying she suffered irreversible injuries in the accident.

She has been told she will never pilot a commercial aircraft again and runs the risk of developing epilepsy.

She was one of only 350 women pilots in Britain, out of more than 10,000 male pilots.

Ms Bourne said she was driving on the A358 in Somerset when she was hit from behind, causing her head to smash through the windscreen in a five-car crash four years ago.

A High Court writ accused Norman Imber, from Coventry, of being the driver and of causing the crash through negligence. Ms Bourne is seeking compensation "in excess of £100,000."

She was a first officer with the City Flyer airline, now owned by British Airways, and is asking for her potential earnings to be taken into account.

She was destined to become a captain and eventually a long-haul captain, with a salary of up to £70,000.

The writ says Ms Bourne is now unlikely to hold down anything more than a casual job ever again.

It said: "She is angry, impatient, irritable and unfulfilled. The loss of her career and principal interest is a profound loss."

She says she has also suffered memory problems, a change in personality, mood swings, facial injuries and loss of mobility.

Ms Bourne said: "Flying was the love of my life and it has been taken away.

"Hopefully I will be awarded enough so I never have to worry about money again."

Ms Bourne is still struggling to come to terms with the crash that changed her life in an instant.

She said: "I was driving back from my parents' home in Blue Anchor, Somerset, when I noticed two or three stationary cars in the road ahead of me.

"I stopped okay but the car behind me shunted my bumper.

"I remember being relieved that it wasn't a big smash but an instant later the car behind him smashed into the back of us all.

"I was wearing a seat belt but the impact was so hard my head smashed into the windscreen and I was out cold.

"I didn't really come round until about three weeks later."

She said an ambulance had to cut the roof off her Fiat car and she was transferred to a hospital in Bristol for surgery on her fractured skull while she was still unconscious.

A cosmetic surgeon cut her from ear to ear and pulled away the skin of her forehead to allow doctors access to the wound.

Her brain had not been pierced despite her severe injuries.

Ms Bourne's mother and two brothers kept vigil at her bedside in a Bristol hospital as she fell into a semi-comatose state after surgery.

She said: "I was able to walk around and follow instructions but I wasn't really conscious. It was like I was in a trance.

"Suddenly one day after a few weeks I had a moment of clarity. I was having a coffee with my mum and something in my head clicked and I sort of came round."

It was a step forward but the devastating effect of the crash on Ms Bourne's brain was yet to be revealed.

She said: "Everyone was pleased I appeared to be okay but it didn't last. I was getting temporary bouts of amnesia. Suddenly I would not know who I was or what I was doing.

"I thought at one point I was on a course at work.

"Another time I thought I had died and was in some sort of purgatory or past life because all the other patients in the hospital seemed to ignore me.

"My mum had to explain to me who and where I was every day and what had happened to me.

"We decided the hospital was getting me down and I wasn't getting better in that environment so I discharged myself a month early."

Then began the long road to recovery. Countless sessions with psychiatrists, speech therapists, physiotherapists and neurological doctors were to follow in the next three years.

She said: "I started gradually improving. The thing that really kept me going was the thought one day I might get to the point where I was able to return to my dream job. They were holding it open for me."

But her hopes were shattered a year ago when she was told by doctors damage to her brain was irreversible and her short-term memory would never be sufficient to allow her pilot a commercial flight ever again.

She said: "I was heartbroken, almost suicidal. I had worked so hard to be a pilot, sacrificed so much and I was just starting to reap the benefits.

"I was in the process of buying a house in Brighton and had worked off all my debt. It took four years of training and cost tens of thousands of pounds to get where I was, "I got a job as cabin crew, which I hated, but persevered because I saw it as a good way in to becoming a pilot."

Ms Bourne held down several jobs to fund her four years of flying tuition. As well as trainee pilot and air hostess she was a waitress, cleaner and barmaid.

She said: "I was thrilled when I finally qualified after striving for it for all that time.

"One day I went into work in a skirt serving coffee as cabin crew and the next day I came in wearing trousers to help fly the plane as a first officer and pilot.

"I was doing short-haul UK flights on 100-seater RJ100 jets and hoped to go onto bigger and better things. It was a dream come true.

"I still look up at aircraft in the sky and say I know how to do that' and I want to be there more than anything.

"I'm addicted to the sun and that's something I miss badly. I was used to flying above the clouds and being as close to it as humans can get so I get very depressed in the winter.

"Physically I am pretty much OK. I have some restricted mobility down the left side but the main problem is the memory loss.

"The danger is in a highly stressed environment like the cockpit of a passenger jet I could forget where I was supposed to be going or forget emergency procedures. There's no way British Airways could risk lives like that."

Ms Bourne admits her memory is not as sharp as it could be.

She said: "I notice it on a day-to-day basis. I go to the cinema with friends and the next day we are all talking about it sometimes I can't even remember the name of it."

Memory loss was not the only mental effect of the crash. She says it has also made a curious difference to her behaviour.

Ms Bourne is now under financial pressure to return to work and dreads having to do a menial job following the glamour of her previous career.

She said: "I have been getting some insurance payouts but that could come to an end soon if the company deems I am capable of earning a living myself.

"But I don't want to be a cleaner or work in a factory for a crust. I have proved I can do better than that and bust my gut to get there. Why should I have to suffer more? "

For the past four months she has been attending a rehabilitation centre for accident victims to assess what kind of work she is capable of.

She refuses to be beaten despite her misfortune, saying: "It was terrible but so far I have got through and feel now I'm coming out the other side."