Deadly job but pilots `box on'

Northland's topdressing industry is vowing to "box on" as a Kaitaia pilot who died on Friday was laid to rest today.
Mark Lynch died when his plane plunged into a hillside between Kaitaia and Ahipara, the second topdressing pilot to die in Northland in four months.
"It's a real tough game and you don't get a second chance," said Jim Summerfield, a topdressing pilot of 27 years experience. "The people in this industry will keep boxing on. It's a job and this country needs us desperately."
Mr Lynch died when his Fletcher aeroplane crashed in perfect conditions around 2pm. Witnesses said the plane seemed to drop out of the sky minutes after leaving a Pukepoto airstrip and plunged nose-first into a steep, scrub-covered hillside.
Mr Summerfield said yesterday he had watched Mr Lynch apply fertiliser on Friday while working on a different property.
The chief pilot of Mr Lynch's business, Far North Air 2004, Mr Summerfield was watching his mate in action from the roadside, and he had liked what he saw. "I had a quiet grin to myself and thought, `You'll be okay, boy'."
But he wasn't. Christopher Mark Lynch, 44, died later that day. His funeral service was to be held at the Far North Community Centre today, followed by a private cremation.
He was a family man and businessman who had always wanted to fly topdressing planes, ever since his childhood on Waikato and Maungaturoto farms.
A recent article in Pacific Wings magazine said Mr Lynch was determined to be a topdressing pilot - ever since he was "donged" on the head by a lump of superphosphate dropped by a topdressing plane when he was a child. "Although I'm new to the industry, it's not new to me, It's been festering away for a long, long time," Mr Lynch told the magazine four months ago.
He owned dairy farms at Kaikohe and Ararua before breaking into the topdressing industry in June 2004 by buying Mr Summerfield's Far North Air business. Mr Summerfield continued to guide Mr Lynch, who was a qualified pilot, through his early months and years of a notoriously hazardous job.
A couple of hours after allowing himself a quiet grin when watching Mr Lynch flying last Friday, the two men chatted on the phone. "We spoke about the job he would be killed on. He asked me how he should approach the job and we had a laugh about a few things," Mr Summerfield said.
Mr Summerfield, who yesterday watched as the wreckage was removed from the hillside, did not know what had caused the crash.
"I know he was sowing lime. He impacted on the ground and that was it. It was terrible."
Mr Lynch's wife, Jacqui, and teenage children Natalie and Christopher were "bearing up" under the stress, he said. "They are strong people."
Mr Lynch was an inexperienced agricultural pilot in industry terms, having completed about 800 hours in the air.
"For his experience level he was doing well," Mr Summerfield said. "He was still basically finishing his training. He had a great future and I thought he would be brilliant for the agricultural flying industry. He was a positive person and a good businessman. He was the sort of guy that leads ... and he loved agricultural flying, just loved it."
His death follows that of Super Air pilot Peter Beatty and his loader driver Greg Nash in November. The former Kaipara men's Fletcher topdressing plane crashed into the Pukenui Forest near Whangarei.