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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Always mind your instruments & warnings |
| 2006-08-08 |
| In their last two-and-a-half minutes, the pilots who flew former Proteas captain Hansie Cronje home, ignored at least 13 warnings that there was an obstacle in their way. After the 13th warning, pilots Willie Meyer and Ian Noakes flew into the mountains at 214km/h. The impact of the crash in which Cronje was a passenger broke the aircraft in two. All three people on the plane were killed instantly. The alert, called a ground proximity warning, is a mechanical voice cautioning pilots to "pull up". "Why did they not respond?" Judge Siraj Desai asked accident investigator Andre de Kock on Tuesday morning. "They thought they were over the sea. They did not expect to be over the mountains. "It does happen in certain accidents," he said. "But is it reasonable for a pilot not to respond to 13 warnings?" Judge Desai asked. "When you get the first pull-up warning you are supposed to immediately engage full thrust and climb higher," De Kock said. "There is no indication that they tried to pull up the plane," De Kock said. He on Monday testified that a combination of human error, possible instrument failure and bad weather had caused the plane to crash in the Outeniqua mountains. "It's like holes in a cheese, sometimes the holes line up and you will get an accident," De Kock said. Judge Desai is leading the inquest into the death of Cronje, Meyer and Noakes. An inquest normally follows a fatal aircraft accident. Cronje died on June 1 2002, aged 32, after the Hawker Siddeley he was a passenger on crashed into the mountains near George. The pilot Willie Meyer and co-pilot Ian Noakes were also killed. De Kock also said further responded to question to his finding that the plane was "technically unairworthy" as not all the paperwork - indicating what repairs was done on the plane - was properly signed off. He said that it was probably signed off by ground staff but not completed in the paperwork on the plane. "We found that this has happened before in other accidents." He said that the owner of the Hawker Siddeley aircraft had contracted repair work to the aircraft out to another plane repair company. "We could not verify if it was done." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Sheesh. This really makes the pilots sound totally ignorant. I have to wonder however if there were some other instruments onboard that weren't working correctly. How could their navigation be so off? Considering even a $50 hand-held GPS receiver could be used to verify one's expected position on a plane, it boggles me how anyone can get so off course anymore? |
| Posted by: Dar 2006-08-08 16:12 |