Small plane flight fatal for lack of 10ft altitude

Press, 28 May 1984, Page 1

Small plane flight fatal for lack of 10ft altitude

PA Auckland A few extra metres of altitude would have saved the lives of four persons whose bodies were found in the wreckage of a light aircraft in the Hunua Ranges, south of Auckland, on Saturday.

Hampered by low cloud, the aircraft clipped the ridge-line trees and crashed, only 9km from Ardmore, its destination on a flight from Wanganui three months ago. That was the view searchers took yesterday as they surveyed the remains of a Piper Cherokee aircraft in thick bush high in the Hunuas. Had the aircraft cleared that last heavily wooded ridge, it would have touched down safely minutes later at Ardmore. “Just another 10 feet and they would have been home,” a member of the police search-and-rescue team said yesterday. The crash site, 3km west of the settlement of Paparimu, was on the northern edge of the rugged Hunuas. Four bodies were found in the plane, which had nosedived into the forest and broken up. The police said the pilot and the three passengers probably were killed instantly on the morning of February 26. The four, all from Wanganui, were Heather Margaret Armstrong, aged 22, single, the pilot and a nurse; David George Young, aged

38, a motor engineer, Graham Ewing Pratt, aged 32, a dentist; and John Barnett Lockett, aged 37, an electro-plater. Police search-and-rescue staff will recover the bodies today after an inspector of air accidents, Mr Nigel Young, has examined the crash site. Two pig hunters found the wreck about midday on Saturday. They walked out of the bush immediately and alerted the police. Police, accompanied by one of the hunters, flew across the ridge in a helicopter to pinpoint the aircraft, but were thwarted at first by the thick, tangled foliage. The head of the Auckland police ’ search-and-rescue squad, Inspector Barry Wallace, said, “We flew across the area four times in the helicopter and could not see a thing. “At one point we were so low that the skids on the helicopter were skimming the canopy of bush.” The aircraft was found eventually by retracing the hunters’ route into the bush. Mr. Wallace said he doubted whether the aircraft would have been found

in a general area search. A police search-and-res-cue team went into the area about 9 a.m. yesterday in one of the Army’s new Unimog trucks. However, the team had to hike to the bushline after the truck had trouble negotiating greasy, clay tracks in a forestry block west of the Paparimu settlement. The aircraft was found on the 500-metre high ridge about 11.30 p.m. The crumpled cockpit, nose down among the trees, and the scattered debris and sheared-off branches graphically illustrated the tragic ending to the Sunday morning flight. One wing was trapped against a ponga fem a dozen metres from the aircraft. Jagged pieces of metal and glass were strewn about the damp, matted undergrowth. The land fell away steeply both sides of the ridge, indicating how close the aircraft came to clearing that last high, wooded obstacle on the descent to Ardmore. Looking at the aircraft’s resting place, wedged vertically in the trees, it was easy to see how searchers failed to see it from the air. Mr Young saw the wreckage from the air yesterday. He said a detailed examination of the scene would start at first light today. He thought he would be there most of the day. He intended to have the bodies removed, as soon as possible. The six-man police search-and-rescue squad have cleared an area of bush on the ridge so a helicopter could drop in supplies needed for their work at the crash site. It was hoped at one stage to bring in Mr Young by helicopter to the clearing but it has been decided that the site is too rugged. Low cloud and mist shrouded the area when the Wanganui Aero Club plane disappeared in February. It was last heard from at 8.57 a.m., 30km south of Ardmore. Police, civilians and friends of the missing people from Wanganui later made extensive searches of the Hunuas, the Waikato Heads area and the lower reaches of the Waikato River.