KEY POINTS:
Two men were found guilty in the High Court at Nelson yesterday of the manslaughter of a pilot in a helicopter crash.
Father-of-nine Philip Heney was killed when a tail component failed while he was landing his Robinson R22 helicopter near Murchison, southwest of Nelson, in August 2005.
Former maintenance company owner John Horrell, 56, and a senior engineer, Ronald Potts, 60, were found guilty of his manslaughter and of causing injury to a passenger.
The defendants sat impassively as the verdicts were read out, but there was a sigh of relief from the gallery where the Heney family had sat throughout the trial.
Mr Heney's widow Raylene said life had been hard for her and the children over the past two-and-a-half years.
"It is justice, it will help us as a family ... He is missing a huge part of his family with new babies and his son just getting married. As a family we've just got to stick together," she told Radio New Zealand.
Mr Heney's son Keiran will follow in his father's footsteps tomorrow when he sits his private pilot's licence.
The family said life would never be the same but the guilty verdict would allow everyone to move on.
Detective Sergeant Mark Kaveney said aircraft engineers needed to take more care and be more vigilant in their work.
The crash occurred near Mr Heney's home on August 26, 2005, the day he collected the helicopter from Skytech Aviation, where it had been undergoing maintenance.
Horrell owned the company and Potts worked for Skytech as a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer.
Crown prosecutor Glen Marshall said the defendants failed to ensure work on the helicopter was directly supervised by a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer and inspected twice by qualified engineers.
Horrell's counsel, Philip Morgan, QC, said it was not up to his client to tell a licensed engineer when to inspect maintenance work. That was up to the engineer and the person doing the work.
Horrell had a process in place to ensure unlicensed engineers were supervised, but could not be expected to judge if the supervision was adequate.
Potts' counsel, Pip Hall, said the tragic accident was the result of human error and not deliberate criminal offending.
A jury returned its verdicts after deliberating for around 10 hours over two days. The men will be sentenced in May.
COMPONENTS OF THE CRASH
* A pilot died on the day he collected his helicopter after it had undergone maintenance.
* A tail component failed on landing.
* The maintenance company owner and an engineer faced manslaughter charges.
- NZPA
