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SYDNEY - As a sixth grader Joanne Ethell dreamt of being a pilot, and following her father and grandfather into the cockpit of a plane.
As a young adult she refined that dream, envisaging a career helping remote communities as a pilot with the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
But the 20-year-old was robbed of that future yesterday, a little more than six months after graduating as a flight instructor.
Ms Ethell and her 18-year-old student Chandrika Gaur died after their Cessna 152 was involved in a mid-air collision and crashed into the back of a house at Casula, in Sydney's southwest.
The 89-year-old flight instructor in the second plane, former World War II pilot Ken Andrews, and his male student, 25, managed to fly their single-engine Liberty 10km back to Bankstown airport and landed safely.
The veteran pilot and his unnamed student may be taken to the crash site to help piece together what went wrong, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said.
"Normally we don't have survivors (of mid-air collisions)," senior transport safety investigator Brett Leyshon said.
"They are the closest witnesses we have to the occurrence, so ... we'll be spending considerable time taking them back through the events."
Ms Ethell's uncle, Brett Ethell, said her Lismore-based parents Kay and Gryff were devastated and would soon travel to Sydney to collect their daughter's body.
The young pilot was an instructor for flight training school Basair, based at Bankstown Airport, and graduated from the company's Cessnock-based academy earlier this year.
Her ultimate dream was to become a pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Mr Ethell said.
"Her mother told me this morning that when she went through her old books that she found a Year Six schoolbook (in which) she had written in the back that she wanted to be a pilot," Mr Ethell told AAP.
"Her ultimate goal was to fly for the Royal Flying Doctor Service - she didn't want to fly 747s."
Ms Ethell followed in the footsteps of her father, a recreational pilot, and her recently deceased grandfather, Dr Guy Ethell, who learned to fly to keep up his rural medical practice.
"His practice was in southeast Queensland, in the country, and it covered so many square kilometres. So he thought he would fly a plane to get round to see his patients," Mr Ethell said.
"Her father was rapt that she could fly a plane before she could drive a car, he thought that was a big deal.
"She'd achieved a lifelong dream to fly, and to die this way is tragic."
- AAP
