A fresh charge has been laid against a Goonengerry pilot who crashed his aircraft into the Clarence River killing a Murwillumbah girl last April.
Kayla Whitten, 11, was killed on April 12, 2014, when the Maule M-5 plane she was in struck a powerline and crashed into the Clarence River at Ewingar.
Following an investigation, 54-year-old John Patrick Crumpton was charged with manslaughter, causing reckless grievous bodily harm, flying an aircraft below 500 feet and reckless wounding.
An Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on the incident released in January found that after hitting powerlines, the plane flipped and came to rest with the cabin upside down and underwater.
Both the pilot and Kayla's father, 36, were sitting in the front row and escaped through a forward door but could not free Kayla from the back of the flooded cabin.
Her body was eventually removed through a cockpit door but repeated resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful.
Lismore Local Court this week heard a fresh charged had been laid against Crumpton under the Section 20 A1 of Civil Aviation Act.
Crumpton was charged with operating an aircraft reckless to endangering the life of a person.
The court heard there had been progressive discussions between the crown prosecutor and Crumpton's barrister Peter O'Connor.
Magistrate David Heilpern adjourned Crumpton's matters until April to allow for further negotiations between the defence and prosecution.
It is anticipated Crumpton will be committed for sentence at his next appearance.
Story and photo: http://www.northernstar.com.au
Investigation number: AO-2014-068
Investigation status: Completed
What happened
On 12 April 2014, a Maule M-5 aircraft, registered VH-HOG, collided with a powerline spanning the Clarence River, approximately 50 km west-south-west of Casino, New South Wales. The pilot was accompanied on the private category flight by two passengers, an adult and a child. The aircraft departed controlled flight after the wirestrike and impacted the water, coming to rest inverted with the cabin submerged.
The pilot and front-seat adult passenger escaped the cockpit through one of the forward doors and attempted to free the rear-seat child passenger from the flooded cabin. After repeated attempts by the pilot to open the rear-right cabin door, the rear-seat passenger was recovered through a cockpit door. Sustained attempts to resuscitate the rear-seat passenger were unsuccessful.
What the ATSB found
The aircraft was capable of normal operation prior to the wirestrike. The weather conditions in the vicinity were suitable for visual flight.
The wirestrike and resulting loss of aircraft control was an unintended consequence of the pilot’s spur of the moment decision to fly at very low level along the river, in an unfamiliar environment and below the minimum stipulated height for flights over unpopulated areas. The pilot reported seeing the powerline cables just before the collision, but with insufficient time to avoid a wirestrike. The pilot did not hold an approval to conduct low-flying operations and had not completed any training to identify the hazards associated with such operations. The powerline was not fitted with visual warning markers, nor was there any requirement for such markers in this case.
The submerged, flooded and inverted cabin increased the difficulty experienced by the occupants in exiting the aircraft. Furthermore, impact damage sustained by the right wing likely rendered the rear-right cabin door unusable as an emergency exit, delaying the recovery of the rear-seat passenger.
http://www.atsb.gov.au
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