Crash inquiry starts on gruesome note

Press, 26 September 1989, Page 6

Crash inquiry starts on gruesome note

PA Wellington The public inquiry into the Foxpine Air Charter disaster near Wanganui began yesterday with a gruesome video showing the site of New Zealand’s »fourth-worst air crash and the recovery of the victims. Most of the family members attending the inquiry left rather than watch the police training video. Family members later said in evidence they had been appalled at the amount of luggage being shoved into the small plane, but had farewelled their loved ones trusting the pilot. The inquiry is being held in Wellington before a District Court judge, Judge David Curruthers, and two advisers, a retired aircraft engineer, Mr Gordon Willetts, and a retired airline captain and air accident inspector, Mr Jack Leech. It seeks to discover why the six-seat Piper Seneca with nine people on board crashed in bad weather 40km north of Wanganui on May 12 last year. The crash, into a steep forest-clad ridge, killed the pilot Noel Oliver Oxnam, age 56, company director, of Foxton, his

daughter in-law Jeanne Elizabeth Oxnam, aged 32, a housewife, of Foxton, her children, Hilari Oxnam, aged 8, and Alice Oxnam, aged 6, Elizabeth Gray, aged 42, married, of Foxton, Robert Stanley Black, aged 21, a farmer of Matamata, Judy Anne Hartley, aged 20, a solo parent of Wanganui, her son, Adam Charles Hartley, aged 19 months, of Wanganui, and Kathleen Connie Clark, aged 52, a housewife of Wanganui. About 50 witnesses were expected to be called in a hearing that would last between three and six weeks. It would seek the cause of the crash, and whether the civil aviation authorities were monitoring adequately the small charter airline. Already the inquiry was examining whether the plane was grossly overloaded. There were hints yesterday it might have run out of fuel as there was no record of the pilot loading more at Auckland before the plane’s return flight to Hamilton and Wanganui. The first police at the scene said they could not smell or detect aviation fuel as they had expected. Family members, some to emotional to read their

evidence, said Mr Oxnam seemed to be in a rush and was stuffing luggage into the plane using all his strength to make it fit. Veronica Gale Robson of Hamilton, a sister of Judy Hartley, said she had been worried about the number of passengers and the amount of luggage being stacked in the plane. She said her sister had her son in her arms, a suitcase between her and the passenger in the next seat, and fnore luggage stacked behind her. “I thought it was excessive,” she said. She said Robert Black had been very worried about the amount of the luggage and said she recalled him saying “I don’t like our chances” and “We’re going to crash.” “I said ‘you will be all right, the pilot must know what he’s doing,’ although my mother and I did not like it,” she said. Mrs Hartley’s mother, Mrs Shirley Laurel Hartley, said: “The whole time every instinct I had was telling me to get them off that plane. “Mrs Clark must have sensed this because she said ‘Don’t worry, I’m clairvoyant and I know I’m going to die in my own bed’.”