Fuel leak cause of Tauranga pilot's fatal US crash

Kelvin Stark was delivering this plane to its Californian owner when he struck trouble 480km off the US coast.

A fuel leak and lack of oxygen contributed to the death of a New Zealand pilot while delivering a new plane to its American owners, an investigation has found.

Tauranga pilot Kelvin Stark, 58, died on December 26, 2003, when he crash-landed the Pacific Aerospace Corporation 750XL into the ocean 480km off the Californian coast after reporting a problem with the fuel system.

The Civil Aviation Authority, which investigated the accident, said Mr Stark was flying the plane from Hamilton, where it was built, to Sacramento in California.

The CAA report said that at the plane's last stop-over in Hawaii the refueller was concerned that fuel was leaking from one of the fuel tanks, but Mr Stark told him it stopped when the plane was in the air. In most other planes the leakage would have stopped once the fuel level had dropped and it was not affected by aerodynamic suction, the report said.

But this plane's design meant the front tanks were continuously topped up and fuel would keep leaking until the other tanks were empty.

The CAA calculated how much fuel was put in the plane at Hawaii after Mr Stark had flown from Christmas Island and found it would have been leaking up to 125 litres an hour.

The report said Mr Stark should have noticed the problem before he took off and once he was in the air, but he did not report it until he had been airborne for eight hours, by which time he had no choice but to ditch the plane into the ocean.

Travelling at 4267m without supplementary oxygen, it was likely he was suffering from hypoxia and fatigue, which could be why he did not detect the problem earlier.

Rescue attempts were not successful because hitting the water probably incapacitated him before he could leave the cockpit.

His body was found submerged in the cockpit but was not recovered because of bad weather.

The report concluded the plane's manual should contain a warning and descriptive material about its fuel system.

- NZPA