Pilot worked extraordinary hours, inquest told

JONATHON Lourie was a hard worker ? but in the three months before his fatal topdressing crash he was working extraordinarily long hours, his widow said.
Yesterday was the second day of a coroner's inquest into the deaths of pilot Jonathon (Joe) Lourie and loader driver Richard McRae. Mr Lourie's widow, Nicola, gave her evidence about the April 2003 crash which happened near Strathmore Saddle, in east Taranaki.
She said her husband was a relatively inexperienced pilot and had no management experience, yet was Wanganui Aero Work's Stratford area manager as well as its pilot.
He sometimes spent two or three hours on the phone at night, organising jobs. In the first months of 2003, Mr Lourie once worked on 11 consecutive days, with nine to 11 hours on duty on at least four of them.
"I strongly believe that my husband should never have been a pilot area manager with the little experience he had. "It contributed to his level of fatigue.
"The fatigue issue needs to be addressed," she said.
Wanganui Aero Work considered Mr Lourie a good pilot and hard worker, its counsel John Unsworth said.
Mr Lourie's brother, Simon, said the family was "concerned to protect his reputation as a fine young pilot doing all he can to establish himself". Like Mrs Lourie, he believed fatigue was a factor in the crash.
It was a 55-year tradition for topdressing companies to have pilot managers, but Mr Unsworth said it was "not necessarily the correct way to go".
Mrs Lourie described how she organised a search for the two men when they failed to return by 7pm on April 4, 2003.
Their cars were at Stratford's airport but their plane was missing.
Stratford police were slow to act, Simon Lourie said, and the family was upset not to be told about the October 2004 inquest into the deaths.
Stratford Senior Sergeant Shaun Keenan described police actions and apologised for failing to tell the families of the deceased about the inquest.
"The inquest officer believed I had notified all parties, and I believed that he had."
First to give evidence yesterday was Ann Fullerton (aka Ann Macrae), the mother of loader driver Richard McRae who was a passenger in the crash.
Many of the matters in her submission were dealt with on Monday, and Coroner Wallace Bain said some of them were outside the scope of the inquest.
He thanked her and supporter Frank Cook for their work and research on the issue of pilot fatigue, and said it would probably be reflected in his recommendations, which could become obligatory.
Ms Fullerton said her son would have wanted his death to count for something.
Her submission dealt with the problem of expecting pilots to regulate their own fatigue levels, especially when under pressure from their employers, on the inadequacy of 15-minute meal breaks, and research showing as many as 25 percent of air accidents were caused by fatigue but this only came out if information could be given anonymously.
Her son was strong, intelligent and loyal, and had become more like an adviser or brother to her.
She considered his death to be manslaughter, and said employers allowed themselves to be persuaded that continuing pilot deaths were somehow acceptable in the pursuit of profitable farming.
Topdressing pilots were not allowed to carry a passenger as well as a full load of fertiliser, but this was common practice.
She and a Lourie speaker thanked Cr Bain for the full and fair way he ran the inquest.
Cr Bain said the next stage was to send out transcripts of what was said in court. The parties would then have a month to make submissions on it.
After that he would send out provisional findings, wait for responses, and then make the findings final.