Plane forced to land in paddock

Press, 6 November 1984, Page 1

Plane forced to land in paddock

A Royal New Zealand Air Force training aircraft made a forced landing in a barley paddock near Motukarara after its engine shut down on a training flight yesterday afternoon. The pilot of the Airtrainer, Flight Lieutenant Hamish Brice, landed the aircraft without incident about 2.30 p.m. He and his student, Officer Cadet C. L. Sycamore, who were on a flight from Wigram Air Base, were not hurt in the emergency landing. The aircraft suffered a sudden drop in oil pressure

when it was rolled over after flying upside down on a training exercise at an altitude of about 1500 m, said an Air Force spokesman. It then lost all power. Flight Lieutenant Brice landed the Airtrainer in a 14ha paddock which up until about two years ago had been used as a drop zone by the Canterbury Skydiving Club. A partner of the farm on which the aircraft landed, Mr Stewart Miller, said that he was raking hay nearby when the aircraft came in low over his barley paddock.

The aircraft was so low that he thought it was topdressing. He knew the occupants of the aircraft were not hurt because the aircraft landed normally. The aircraft apparently lost oil pressure after its oil pump drive sheared. The Air Force plans to conduct a technical investigation into what went wrong. The . Airtrainer was winched on to an Air Force truck and taken back to Wigram Air Base yesterday afternoon. The aircraft had done a normal training manoeuvre when the incident happened, said the Air Force spokesman. Its pilot then made a “copybook landing.” The Air Force has used the Airtrainer, which has a distinctive red tail, as a training aircraft since 1976. It is the only training aircraft based at Wigram and is familiar to many Christchurch residents.