Victims' families doubt aviation watchdog will make safety changes

Families of the victims of an air crash near Christchurch Airport in June 2003 doubt the country's aviation watchdog will follow through on changes urged to prevent a similar tragedy.

But the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it has started making improvements in the wake of the "appalling tragedy".

In a statement, the families of crash victims Andrew Rosanowski, Alistair Clough, Richard Finch and Katherine Carman said they were impressed with the coroner's findings but had "no faith that the CAA will adopt the recommendations of the coroner".

They pointed to the "CAA's failure to act upon numerous reported rule breaches by Air Adventures over a period of years".

They said in their statement: "The culture of the CAA that there should be 'encouragement rather than enforcement' has to change. This was a preventable tragedy that has had an incalculable human cost."

The families said New Zealand had "one of the worst records for accidents involving general aviation in the developed world".

Alaska had the worst record, with New Zealand second.

"It is the sincere wish of the families that the CAA and Ministry of Transport will act on the recommendations of the coroner's findings and that this tragedy will not be repeated."

Irene King, chief executive of the Aviation Industry Association, said the families' accident statistic was three years out of date.

"What the families are talking about relates to three years ago when our statistics were really bad."

But since 2003, programmes such as the Aircare project - a joint initiative between the association, the CAA and the Accident Compensation Corporation to improve aviation safety - had resulted in a 30 per cent reduction in general aviation accidents.

New Zealand's general aviation safety rate was now "up there with the best of them", Ms King said.

Desmond Hogg, father of crash victim Desma Hogg, had not seen the findings yesterday but told the Herald that from what he had heard, he was concerned blame might be falling on people other than Mr Bannerman.

"If you don't blame the pilot, who do you blame?"

A daughter of Mr Bannerman said her family had no comment.

- Additional reporting: NZPA, Anne Beston