Warning Given To Topdressing Pilots

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30155, 12 June 1963, Page 12

Warning Given To Topdressing Pilots

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 11

“If a pilot has the slightest doubt about the wisdom of continuing flying operations in uncertain wind conditions, he must exercise stern selfdiscipline and be very sure that the old proverb is not reversed and valour allowed to become the better part of discretion,” said the chief inspector of air accidents. Wing Commander O. J. O’Brien, reporting on investigations into a fatal topdressing accident on a farm in the Raglan county in January. The report said the pilot, flying a Fletcher aircraft, had been engaged in topdressing in good conditions, but the wind later increased mark-

edly. Just before taking off on his last flight the pilot asked his Loader-driver to tell the farmer he might have to “pack up” operations but “would give it another go. anyway.” The report said the nature of the emergency could not be definitely established, but the evidence pointed towards turbulence or loss of power, or both. “The number of accidents in which the cause appears to have been related to the pilot’s decision to ‘give it another go’ before ceasing operations because of increasing turbulence, suggests that agricultural pilots should carefully decide, each man for himself, upon a positive line of demarkation between an excessively cautious approach to the vagaries in wind in hilly country, and a careless disregard for the possibility of loss of control through flying in those conditions.” said Wing Commander O’Brien. “While agricultural flying is inherently no more dangerous than any other type, the margin for error when contour flying is, nevertheless, reduced to the minimum. For this reason, pilots cannot afford to venture beyond the point of discretion.”