Pilots guilty of flying breaches

Press, 9 August 1976, Page 2

Pilots guilty of flying breaches

; PA Hamilton ' Two Hamilton pilots, who 1 did not have commercial licences or licences to run air services, accepted money to fly people to and from . Christchurch, the Hamilton ( Magistrate’s Court was told ( on Friday. Christopher Richard Bow- ■ den and Kenneth Sydney Roy , both changed their pleas . from not guilty to guilty on ( several charges when they appeared before the Court. Bowden admitted flying without a commercial licence and running an air service without a licence, on November 23 last year. Roy admitted two similar charges relating to flights on November 21, as well as running an air service without a licence on February 27-29 this year. The prosecutor for the Civil Aviation Division (Mr C. M. Earl) said Bowden had flown a group of people between Hamilton and Christchurch and one of the passengers had later admitted paying him $4O. Roy had accepted $4O from all his passengers on both his trips between the cities.

Bowden told the Court he planned his trip as a weekend holiday and had taken his de facto wife and her child with him. One of the passengers had sent him $4O about a month, later and he had considered it as a contribution towards the expenses of the week-end, which had cost him about $2OO. Roy said that he was studying for his commercial pilot’s licence and needed the flights to log the necessary flying hours for it. The fact that there were passengers on the flights had been incidental to this; he had accepted money from them to help pay for the flights, as the cost of logging the necessarv hours was very high. Mr T. B. Mooney, S.M.. convicted Bowden and fined him $lOO, with $5 costs and $22.50 solicitor’s fees, on the charge of flying without a commercial licence. On the other charge he fined him $5O. Roy was fined a total of $2OO on the three charges, with $l5 costs and $39 solicitor’s fees.