CAA unable to stop fatal charter flight, MPs told

Civil Aviation director John Jones has told MPs that his agency could not have acted to stop a plane taking off which later crashed at the cost of eight lives.

Mr Jones yesterday told the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that the CAA did not have strong enough evidence to have ordered Air Adventures charter pilot Michael Bannerman from the skies before his Piper Navajo Chieftain crashed near Christchurch airport in 2003, killing Mr Bannerman and seven Crop and Food Research staff.

"I have reviewed the last few years since their certification and there is nothing in the Air Adventures audits or findings or their incidents that would have given me enough ammunition to remove their certificate," Mr Jones said.

"We had an operator that was showing continuous improvement until, unfortunately, the fatal bit. Just a few weeks before that he'd been flight checked and had been checked as satisfactory ... if I had taken action we would have been in court."

This contradicted statements from CAA chairman Ron Tannock last month that the crash was allowed to occur because CAA did not stick to its "non-compliance no-fly" rule, and that the CAA had to "face up" to the question of whether it was responsible for the crash.

Mr Tannock was in Blenheim yesterday rather than at the select committee meeting, an absence which infuriated National MPs.

"I think he has almost thumbed his nose at this committee ... either the chairman is right or the director is right but they both can't be right. They now have a total contradiction on the record," National transport spokesman Maurice Williamson said after the meeting.

Mr Tannock's name had been on the agenda and committee chairman, Labour MP Mark Gosche, said it had been presumed he would appear. Although he was not pleased Mr Tannock had not been at the meeting, he said he did not want to be too harsh in case Mr Tannock had had a legitimate reason to be absent.

"It would have been useful for him to be there," Mr Gosche said.

"Obviously what will happen is that next time we will specify our requests rather than leave it to an assumption that somebody who said he would come to the next meeting would be there."

Mr Jones told the committee he and Mr Tannock had met on Wednesday. Mr Jones said he had suggested to Mr Tannock that he would be able to answer all the committee's questions.

Earlier this year Christchurch coroner Richard McElrea found the Air Adventures crash was preventable and singled out the CAA in several of his recommendations.