Australia’s aviation history littered with tragedies
AUSTRALIA might be home to the safest airline in the world but our general aviation history is not without its tragedies.
- Plane crash that took 27 years to find
- Disaster that changed Australian air safety
- Inexplicable reason behind fatal air crash
AUSTRALIA’s reputation for having the safest skies in the world thanks to strictly enforced civil aviation regulations is not unblemished.
Although commercial airlines have been involved in exceptionally few crashes, charter flights and light planes have had their fair share of tragedies in recent times - for a multitude of reasons.
Updates: Plane crashes into Melbourne shopping centre
1. On June 10, 1960, Trans-Australia Airlines Flight 538 was on approach at night to land at Mackay, Queensland, from Brisbane, when it crashed into the sea. All 29 people on board Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA) Flight 538 were killed. It was TAA’s first accident to cause passenger fatalities in the 14 years since the airline was founded and remains Australia’s deadliest civil aviation accident.
An inquiry into the crash did not determine a cause. The aircraft had flown into the ocean for no apparent reason, and so the board focussed on the altimeter. One possibility was that the static pressure system or altimeter was malfunctioning and not allowing display of the correct altitude.
One of the recommendations made by the Board of Accident Inquiry was that passenger-carrying aircraft of the size of the TAA plane and larger should be equipped with flight data recorders.
2. The 2005 Lockhart River disaster claimed the lives of 15 people on a twin-propeller Metroliner operated by Transair.
The flight from Bamaga to Cairns in Far North Queensland was only minutes from its destination when severe weather sent the plane veering offcourse and into rugged rainforest terrain. The victims included 10 men and three women, including a policewoman, and the two male crew.
3. Five years earlier, a young pilot won praise despite crashing his Piper Chieftain plane into South Australia’s Spencer Gulf after double engine failure.
All eight people on board the Whyalla Airlines flight were killed including 22-year-old pilot Ben Mackiewicz, who maintained radio communications as he prepared to ditch the plane.
4. Also in 2000, a chartered Beechcraft Super King Air departed Perth for Leonora in Western Australia but never arrived. Instead, the plane crashed near Burketown in Queensland more than five hours away after a “ghost flight”. Final communications with the pilot indicated he was suffering hypoxia or a lack of oxygen which led to his death and those of his passengers.
5. In 1994, an Aero Commander 690 operated by Seaview Air crashed into the Pacific Ocean while flying from Williamtown to Lord Howe Island. The nine people on board included two honeymooning couples, a family of two parents, and two of their children, and pilot Paul Sheil. The subsequent inquiry into the crash revealed a litany of regulatory failures allowed Seaview Air to operate culminating in the tragedy.
6. The crash of an executive jet during a charter flight from Airlie Beach to Mareeba, remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries — with no obvious cause for the tragedy that killed 11 people on May 11, 1990. Those on board included nine local councillors, a nun and pilot Stan Lindgren who was considered very experienced, and medically fit to fly. No severe weather was experienced as the plane descended into Mareeba yet somehow the Cessna 500 crashed into Mount Emerald, 15km away.
7. In February, 1980, 13 people were killed when an Advance Airlines Beechcraft King Air crashed at Sydney Airport. As the scheduled passenger flight took off, the left engine failed prompting the pilot to request an emergency landing. The plane then crashed into the sea while attempting to land.
8. Other aviation tragedies of note, include the deaths of 13 people in a hot air balloon crash near Alice Springs on August 13, 1989. The victims were all in the basket of one balloon that collided in mid-air with another, and plunged to the ground in a terrifying 51-second descent. It was the deadliest hot air balloon until February, 2013 when 19 people died in a hot air balloon crash at Luxor in Egypt.
9. In 2001, four people died when an Eastland Air charter flight crashed on take-off from Toowoomba airport. Pilot Bruce Johnson and three Queensland Government mental health team members were on board the plane which had been having problems with the left engine.
10. Six friends were the victims of an October 2012 crash involving a replica 1934 De Havilland Dragon owned by pilot Des Porter. The three couples were returning to Caboolture after a day at the Monto Air show, when heavy cloud engulfed the plane and it crashed into heavily treed terrain in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
Originally published as Australia’s aviation history littered with tragedies
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