A terminally ill air crash hero has started selling The Big Issue to help support his two disabled sons after he’s gone.

Dave Besley, 67, from Bristol, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia at the end of 2021, and given just six months to live.

He decided to spend his last weeks selling the magazine with his two sons, Mark Besley, 32, and Shane Besley, 29, who both have behavioural and learning difficulties.

He hopes selling the magazine will be an outlet for them after his death.

Dave said: ‘I wanted to come back to my family in Bristol because I have got my wife and my two disabled boys living here.

‘I decided on The Big Issue so we can actually get out there and meet people, talk to people and get some money for the rest of their life when I’m gone.

‘I wanted to do something instead of sitting on the settee shriveling up and waiting to die.’

Dave said selling The Big Issue is not just for homeless people, as some use it as an opportunity to ‘hang on in life’.

‘It’s for people like me who’ve got disabilities so they can be a part of the community, not just living quietly in a corner.

‘I try to explain what The Big Issue is and that it’s a hand up – everybody has their own reasons for selling. For some people it’s just for money.

‘For some it’s something to do. For some it’s just to hang on in life.’

Dave said he is hoping to live until the 50th anniversary of the Basel air disaster, which killed 108 people.

The ill-fated flight took off from Bristol Airport with 145 people onboard before crashing in the snow in Switzerland in 1973.

Although Dave’s uncle sadly died in the disaster, he managed to survive and save 10 other people – including his own mum.

‘That’s what I’m fighting for. There are only a couple of survivors left and I want to be there to pay my respects to the survivors in Switzerland and England,’ he said.

‘I always felt that I should have been with the rest of them on the plane when they passed so I have a heavy connection with Bristol.

‘You still see it every year. You can hear the crying, you can hear the plane roar, you see every little bit.’

Describing the crash, Dave said his leg was impaled by a metal bar, and his mum’s foot had been chopped off.

‘I remember waking up in the mountain on the place stuck upside down, hanging with my belt around me,’ he said.

‘I had a bar go through my right left through the chair, and I could hear my mum shouting for me so I pulled my leg off the bar.

‘I managed to get out through the rubble into the snow and realised we were on a mountain. There was nothing, just snow and trees.’

Dave said he was eventually able to find other survivors, including his mum, and bring them to safety.

‘I came across my mum and she had her foot amputated at the bottom,’ he said. ‘I managed to pick her up, took her out in the snow and put her foot in a carrier bag that saved her foot.

‘I went back in to find my uncle and came across some other people and carried them out and put them in the snow.

‘I got them out but found my uncle and he was already gone, God rest his soul.’

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