By PAUL YANDALL
TAUMARUNUI - One of the country's oldest pilots may have been trying to land his plane after becoming incapacitated or disoriented before crashing it and killing himself and two passengers, a coroner's inquest heard yesterday.
Blenheim pilot Neville Haig McDonald, 81, died with his two passengers, mother and daughter Heather Anne Williams, 48, and Hayley Nicole Williams, 23, when the Piper Cherokee Archer they were in crashed near Kirikau, 28km southwest of Taumarunui, around midday on May 11 last year.
Mr McDonald was flying the two, believed to be his friends, back to their Tauranga home before the plane went down in rugged bush and exploded into flames, killing all on board.
Civil Aviation Authority air safety investigator, Steven Walker, told Taumarunui coroner Tim Scott yesterday that Mr McDonald may have decided to land the plane for safety after becoming incapacitated or disoriented.
An authority report into the crash released in January stated that Mr McDonald had enough quinine, a drug commonly used to treat malaria and alleviate cramps, in his system to cause temporary blindness. The report found that he had a quinine concentration of between 7 and 11 mcg/ml - above the 5 mcg/ml level known to cause sudden blindness, vertigo, double vision and decreased peripheral vision.
Mr Walker said Mr McDonald also had a history of "airspace occurrences" and had been involved in three incidents in the 21/2 years before the crash related to "loss of positional awareness and unauthorised airspace incursion."
He added that his investigation suggested that Mr McDonald, a retired Air Force engineer, may have also been too proud to call for help as the plane went down.
"At a point immediately before the accident Mr McDonald asked another aircraft to report his position," he said. "We believe that he lost position awareness. However, the call made to the other aircraft [was] not of the nature to suggest that Mr McDonald required help."
Dr Kathleen Callaghan, principal medical officer for the Aviation Authority, told the inquest that discrepancies in Mr McDonald's medical records used to grant him a pilot's licence had also been discovered.
Elderly people were required to undergo strict medicals before being granted a licence but Mr McDonald's long-term intake of quinine was not recorded until he applied for a renewal in January last year - three years after he had returned to flying.
Mr McDonald, a widower, took off late morning on May 11 from the Omaka airfield near Blenheim and was travelling by way of Wanganui, Taumarunui, and Rotorua airspace back to Tauranga with the women.
At around 11.40 am that day his plane was spotted losing height as it entered the Kirikau Valley, approaching a paddock above the valley's river floor.
One witness who lived near the paddock, Karen Belling, told the inquest that from her home she saw the plane fly down into the valley before looping around and travelling back along the river. She said she lost sight of the plane as it lost height, but heard a loud crash before seeing smoke rise from near the river.
Her husband said he was the first to reach the site, around 10 minutes after the plane crashed, but said it was too late to save anyone. All three on board had been burned beyond recognition and were later identified by dental records.
'Landing for safety' led to plane crash
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.