CAA wants closer scrutiny of amateur aircraft

The Civil Aviation Authority wants to bring back a system of checking the construction of amateur aircraft stage by stage - which if used may have prevented a fatal plane crash.

The recommendation comes in a report released yesterday on a crash in which an aircraft plunged into the sea off Tauranga nearly two years ago, killing the pilot and his grandson.

The report said the pilot, 73-year-old Lindsay Dunlop of Tauranga, did not have a current licence, had assembled his plane incorrectly and should not have been carrying a passenger.

His grandson Alan, 18, also died in the crash on December 28, 2002.

The report said Mr Dunlop was trying to fix a problem with the plane's nose wheel shortly after takeoff in fine, clear weather and light winds.

It said the fault probably would have been picked up under a checking system in place until 1990.

Mr Dunlop spent 20 years building the Zenith Zenair CH200 plane after importing a plan from the United States, and had spent up to 32 hours test-flying it.

The report said Mr Dunlop started having problems with the nose wheel after lifting off from Tauranga Airport at 11am on a flight to Waihi Beach Airfield.

A lock on the nose wheel either failed to work or disengaged, leaving the wheel free to move, upsetting the balance of the aircraft.

Rather than return to the airport or climb to a higher altitude, Mr Dunlop opted to try to fix the problem at a low altitude.

He lost control and the two-seater plane crashed 500m off the seaward side of Matakana Island.

People out fishing reported seeing the aircraft flying straight and level, then entering a spiral dive before flattening out momentarily. The plane then pitched down abruptly and hit the water head-on.

The report said Mr Dunlop's private pilot licence had expired three months earlier.

He was not meant to be carrying passengers because the aircraft was still flying under a short-term Airworthiness Certificate for test flights.

Mr Dunlop had built the nose wheel incorrectly and had not followed plan specifications.

But the report also said the nose wheel fault was common to the type of aircraft he was flying, and had caused problems on other Zenith aircraft even when they were made correctly.

At the time of the crash, these problems had not been reported to engineers or the authority.

Pilots and the designer had accepted the fault and had devised an in-air "fix" for the problem.

The fault would not have been seen during a typical daily inspection, because it was covered by two plates.

However, it would probably have been found under a checking system that ended in 1990, when the authority's inspectors checked amateur aircraft in stages while they were being built.

The authority's crash report urged that a similar system be re- introduced, under which aircraft control systems and other vital parts would be checked.

- NZPA