Chance discovery exposed fake aircraft crash

Howard Jamison almost had everyone fooled.

The experienced 46-year-old Ashburton pilot and skydiving operator made national headlines with his dramatic tale of survival after supposedly crashing his Cessna aircraft into the sea off the Canterbury coast.

If not for the chance discovery of his undamaged plane six months later, the public might never have known that Jamison was a con artist, stringing people along in a carefully detailed lie to defraud insurance companies.

Jamison told police he made up the tale to save his company, Alpine Aviation, from bankruptcy.

In the Ashburton District Court yesterday, Jamison pleaded guilty to two fraud charges. He is now on bail and trying to come up with $258,250 in reparation in the hope he will escape a jail term when sentenced next week.

Jamison hatched his master plan on July 28 last year.

He had a 12m shipping container delivered to his aircraft hangar at Ashburton Airport. Throughout the night he dismantled the tail and wings, injuring his head and shoulder when he became pinned between one of the wings and the plane's fuselage.

He would later tell ambulance and hospital staff those injuries were suffered when he crashed his plane.

The following morning, having packed the aircraft away in the shipping container, he had the container moved to Wilsons Bulk Transport yard in Ashburton.

That evening he drove his car to Timaru Airport, filled two containers with about 40 litres of aviation fuel, recorded it in his log book and filed a flight plan for a flight from Timaru to Ashburton.

He drove to a beach just north of Timaru and made another call to the Airways Corporation to tell them he had been forced to ditch his plane in the sea just off the coast.

Jamison told authorities and media that he had escaped from the crashed aircraft and swum ashore with the help of some plywood flooring from the plane and two life vests. He said he had made it across paddocks to a road where he was picked up by a motorist who took him back to Ashburton.

Jamison spent a night in Ashburton Hospital and after being discharged the following day, went flying with a colleague in a false effort to try to locate his plane. Of course, there was no sign of it.

Jamison collected his insurance money, even as his claims were probed by a private investigator, and months passed before a startling discovery was made.

It is believed vandals sneaked into the Wilson Bulk Transport yard and happened to break the padlock securing the container that housed Jamison's hidden plane.

The following morning, on January 25, Wilson Bulk Transport manager John Petrie found the container broken open and looked inside.

"I knew whose container it was and I basically recognised what it was. I had seen the plane before," Mr Petrie told the Herald.

"I was somewhat surprised I found it there."

He remembered Jamison had visited the yard the day after his supposed crash.

"What he wanted, I can't recall exactly."

Mr Petrie contacted the Civil Aviation Authority and police and soon after Jamison was arrested.

Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Bill Sommer said Jamison could face a review of his right to hold a flying certificate or licence given the requirement for a pilot to be a "fit and proper person".