Kiwi pair die in ghost flight mystery

By SCOTT INGLIS

Two New Zealanders are among eight men who died after their plane flew 3000km across Australia without a pilot before crashing in flames.

Investigators believe the pilot and everyone else on board lost consciousness soon after takeoff from Perth when a loss of cabin pressure starved them of oxygen.

The ghostly flight ended five hours later when the plane plummeted into the ground near a cattle station in remote north Queensland.

The doomed plane took off at 10.30 pm Monday night (NZ time) and was supposed to land soon afterwards in the Western Australian town of Leonora.

Instead, it continued its diagonal path on autopilot across three states, first climbing above its cruise altitude and then descending until it crashed at 3.20 am yesterday (NZ time) about 80km southeast of Burketown.

The eerie flight is similar to one last October in which champion golfer Payne Stewart died after his Dallas-bound Learjet took off from Orlando, Florida, and flew across five US states before crashing in South Dakota, 2414km later.

One of the dead New Zealanders was Brett Hewett, aged 31, who grew up in Auckland and attended Rutherford High School in Te Atatu.

His mother, Joan Hewett, said from her home in Lincoln, near Christchurch, that her son was only weeks from his 32nd birthday.

His birthday present was still on her kitchen bench, waiting to be sent.

Mr Hewett moved to Australia in 1997.

The other New Zealander was Roger Clarkson, 30, a geologist from Dunedin.

Mr Clarkson was returning to work in Leonora after visiting his wife in Perth, said a friend, Allen Anderson.

Mr Anderson, who was Mr Clarkson's best man, said he was still trying to come to terms with his friend's death. .

"He was a great guy and will be missed by his family and friends."

Mr Clarkson married Leanne Wright, also of Dunedin, in November 1996, and the couple moved to Perth soon after.

The seven passengers on the tragic flight all worked for Sons of Gwalia, one of Australia's biggest gold producers, and often flew to the company's mine in Leonora.

Sons of Gwalia chartered the plane from Central Air.

The plane, a Beechcraft King Air 200, took off from Perth normally, but about 100km into the flight the pilot, an experienced flyer, did not respond to control tower radio calls.

A plane went up to fly alongside the Beechcraft, but that pilot could not see anything and was forced to land because of low fuel.

Central Air managing director Ben Martinez told the Herald search and rescue authorities called him about 45 minutes after the aircraft took off.

He knew the plane was in trouble when it continued to climb from 8000m to more than 10,000m.

"Words can't describe the feelings in my mind."

Two aircraft, including a Northern Territory Royal Flying Doctor plane, took off from Alice Springs and shadowed the aircraft into Queensland.

The pilot of the flying doctor plane, Steve Patrick, said his aircraft stayed about 300m away from the Beechcraft, but he could not see any cabin lights inside it.

He and the other pilot stayed with the stricken plane until it lost altitude and crashed into the remote Wernadinga farm station, about 80km southeast of Burketown.

The crash scene was strewn with wreckage and scorched earth over a 300m radius.

The owner of the Wernadinga station, Alister McCloymont, was one of the first to arrive, but had to stand helplessly as the plane burned.

"Just carnage, just a mess," was how he described it last night.

The crash is being investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The bureau's deputy director of air safety investigations, Barry Sargeant, confirmed to the Herald that loss of cabin pressure was the favoured theory as the reason for the crash.

"It's a possibility - and it would explain a lot of things," he said.

But Mr Sargeant said emergency oxygen masks should have dropped down in front of the pilot and passengers, enabling them to breathe while the pilot brought the aircraft to a lower altitude.

The managing editor of Aviation Australia magazine, Jim Thorn, said the eight men probably drifted into unconsciousness and died soon after takeoff.

"As you're getting higher, your blood is getting less and less oxygen," he said.

"You don't really realise it - the body tries to compensate a little bit for it, but it can't really do much - and you just start to get tired very quickly.

"It would have got to the point where everyone got very dozy, and from there you just gently pass out and the aircraft continues on automatic pilot."

Mr Sargeant said there was no suggestion at this stage that Beechcraft King Air 200 aircraft in general had any problems.

But Australia's Bureau of Air Safety Investigations said that on June 21 last year, another Beechcraft King Air 200 almost crashed after a dramatic loss of cabin pressure.

During the incident, a passenger in the co-pilot's seat noticed the pilot behaving erratically.

Soon afterwards, the pilot collapsed and the passenger -also an experienced pilot - took control and brought the aircraft down to 2000m, where it was discovered the aircraft was not pressurised.

Investigators found that passenger oxygen masks had not dropped because of a problem with the mask container doors, and the cabin altitude alert system may have malfunctioned.