Holmes may get wings clipped after crashing veteran biplane

Marty Sharpe
Paul Holmes' flying career is up in the air after his biplane's plummet to the ground at Bridge Pa on Friday. Asked this morning by Hawke's Bay Today what the future of his 1940 Boeing Stearman biplane was, Holmes replied that he "really had no idea".
Holmes had just a "sore knee and a missing fingernail" after walking away from the biplane, which crashed in a vineyard near the Bridge Pa Aerodrome about 10.20am.
A shaken but remarkably composed Holmes, standing just metres from his crumpled Boeing Stearman, said on Friday he may be forced to abandon his love of flying after this latest accident.
"I was up early this morning, it was a beautiful morning ... doing a few touch-and-goes ... and was making my very last landing - a beautiful landing - when I was hit by a crosswind.
"I should have given more right rudder, but I didn't and the plane went hard left," Holmes said.
"It's something that happens to tail-draggers. Crap happens.
"I nearly got up but a wheel . . . or the fuselage ... clipped the vineyard posts and it was all over, Rover.
"I'm very lucky. It's nothing compared to what could have been. I'm sorry to have bothered so many people," he said.
He estimated the aircraft was travelling at 80 to 100km/h when it clipped the post.
Holmes said he had called his family to tell them he was okay and he was looking forward to being with them.
When asked whether the accident might put him off flying, he replied: "There may be pressure at home to abandon it".
Mike Shaw, who was playing golf at the nearby Hastings Golf Club, said he saw the yellow and red aircraft flip.
An ambulance was quickly on the scene but Mr Shaw said no-one appeared to have required treatment after the crash which happened less than a year after the same plane crash-landed at Ngamatea, about 60km away on the Napier-Taihape road.
Last January 14, the plane was seen circling several times over Ngamatea Station before crashing in what appeared to be an emergency landing, clipping a fence and skidding down an incline before coming to rest against another fence.
In 1989 Holmes survived a helicopter crash which killed a cameraman on assignment off the East Coast, and in 2000 he was twice in strife for his flying at Ardmore Airport, south of Auckland.