Flight details sought

Press, 20 October 1981, Page 3

Flight details sought

PA Wellington The acting chief inspector of air accidents, Mr Jack Leech, will investigate the reported low flight by a Qantas Boeing 7475 P over the Wellington hill suburb of Newlands on Saturday. The flight operations assistant director with the Civil Aviation Division, Mr Maurice McGreal, said yesterday that the investigation would be done under Accident Investigation Regulations. Mr Leech would seek transcripts of recordings taken at the Wellington Airport control tower as well as information from the Boeing's flight data recorder. At least a dozen residents

complained to Civil Aviation authorities after the aircraft passed over Newlands. One was an Air Force navigator, Squadron Leader Robert Randal, who lives in Edgecombe Road, the highest part of Newlands. He said that the aircraft was about 500 ft above Brandon Rock, a hilly outcrop just up the street from his home.

"That would mean it was about 500 ft below the minimum altitude for aircraft passing over the Newland’s beacon,” he said. He telephoned the supervisor at Wellington Air Traffic Control and told him that the plane seemed low for an

aircraft using an instrument approach.. Under instrument approach from the north aircraft are supposed to pass over the beacon at an altitude of not less than 2100 ft.

Squadron Leader Randal said that the Qantas aircraft came over below the cloud base but a Boeing that followed on the usual flightpath was in cloud. Mrs Pat Kerr, also of Edgecombe Road, said that it seemed as if the Qantas aircraft would hardly clear Brandon Rock.

“My neighbour was petrified," Mrs Kerr said. “She told her son to get down because “this is it.”