Balloon tragedy inquest starts

LIVES CUT SHORT: Chrisjan Jordaan and Alexis Still died in the accident.PHOTO/FILE

A gruelling week lies ahead for families of the Carterton hot air balloon crash victims, as they re-hear evidence of how their loved ones died.

Today is the first day of Coroner Peter Ryan's inquest into the deaths of the 11 people on board the ill-fated flight on January 7, 2012.

Four days have been set aside, with evidence from emergency officers, forensic experts, witnesses and family members being submitted to the court.

"It's just your worst nightmare," Bronwyn Brewster, daughter of the late Desmond and Ann Dean said. Her parents were aged 70 and 65, respectively, when they died in the crash.

"Every time a report comes out - it's kind of like we're taking two steps forward and one giant step back at a time.

"If anything good can come out of what's happened, then it would be recommendations being put in place to change the legislation, to bring in mandatory, random drug testing, to stop any other innocent family from going through what we've been going through."

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission has already established pilot errors were ultimately responsible for the balloon crash.

At the time, Carterton pilot Lance Hopping, 53, had cannabis in his system. While a raft of recommendations have been made to address this, legislation specifically implementing mandatory random drug testing has not been passed - adding to the frustrations of families involved.

At the moment, aviation adventure operators are required to ensure staff whose work directly affects the safety of the operation are drug- and alcohol-free in the workplace.

The Traffic Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) investigation report highlighted a previous "concern" raised with the Civil Aviation Authority about Mr Hopping and the cancellation of a balloon flight due to his appearance of being "too pissed/and or high".

Carterton mayor Ron Mark said the week would be difficult for all involved as well as the wider community. APNZ