Reporting unsafe behaviour can avoid accidents and injuries.
Early in 2024, a pilot with a history of non-compliance with the civil aviation rules crashed for the third time in his 50 years of flying. The aircraft was totalled. The pilot – the sole occupant – survived but suffered severe head, chest, and leg injuries.
The pilot had been flying since 1976 but had never been licensed nor certificated. Instead, he’d logged more than 500 hours as a student pilot.
Over the years he also repeatedly flew aircraft without a certificate of airworthiness (CoA).
The pilot’s first aircraft was a gyrocopter. He crashed that into a paddock. He purchased another aircraft in 1992. After a propellor flew off it during flight in the mid-1990s, he put it in storage for 22 years. During the 2000s the pilot was flying yet another aircraft, which was written off after he crashed it into a tree.
In 2017 the pilot was attempting to make that second aircraft airworthy – the aircraft he’d bought in 1992, then stored. In 2024 the CAA identified nearly three dozen unaddressed issues with this aircraft, and a review of airworthiness could not be undertaken.
Despite this, the pilot conducted a ‘test flight’, during which he once again crashed – this time hitting a paddock fence and flipping upside down.
The pilot had been repairing his last aircraft himself. A lot of it was just balsa wood and glue, says CAA Investigator Steve Wilson.
“He’d even secured his seatbelt with self-tapping screws. An engineer then convinced him to replace them with a suitable bolt and anchor plate fixture.
“That saved his life.”
Steve says there wasn’t much left of the wreckage.
“The fuselage structure was cracked across its width. I’m amazed he walked away from the crash.”
Others would have known
Steve questions how comfortable other pilots were, sharing the sky with this pilot.
“If the pilot had been flying this way for 50 years, somebody must have known something.
“But until they share that with us, we cannot take the appropriate action.1 The CAA cannot monitor every flight, of every pilot, everywhere in the country. Whether this pilot – or anyone else like them – get into the air again depends on how everyone else reacts.
“If you’re sharing airspace with someone like this and that worries you, little will change unless you speak up.”
One of two
The CAA took the pilot to court for flying without a PPL, for flying an unairworthy aircraft, and for “flying recklessly”.
At the pilot’s prosecution, the summary of facts noted he’d taken a flight path across, “...at least two state highways, numerous farms, occupied dwellings, and possibly several other settlements”.
For flying without a licence, without a CoA, and for unnecessarily endangering others’ safety, the pilot was found guilty and fined $13,350.
Such CAA prosecutions are rare but are necessary in cases of repetitive and unsafe behaviour.
For example, the CAA has received more than 5500 accident and incident reports so far this year, and over 1000 ARCs in the same time frame.
Of these, just two have been brought before a judge.
And now read...
Everybody knew for some tips on how to approach someone whose flying is concerning you.
Footnotes
1 Report your aviation concern(external link)
Photo courtesy of Fire and Emergency NZ.