Dad praised for selfless final moments before plane crash
CCTV footage from a nearby house shows the moment Anthony Liddell’s stricken light plane crashed into a suburban street, swiping power lines before bursting into flames, killing the father of two. VIDEO: 7News
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A PILOT tragically killed when a plane burst into flames after crashing on a suburban street was a dad of two and a community volunteer from the Mornington Peninsula.
Anthony Liddell, 50, has been praised for his efforts in steering the light plane to the middle of the road and away from nearby houses in his final moments of life.
Friends have paid tribute to the respected pilot and aircraft engineer, laying flowers at the crash site in Mordialloc.
SCARLET ST RESIDENTS ‘WAITING FOR DISASTER’
“I’ve known him for many years, he was a really good bloke,” said one close friend.
He said there was no doubt the experienced pilot acted heroically in his final moments.
“He was highly skilled and would have done this hundreds of times before — he knew what he was doing,” he said.
Ralph Guerry, a chief pilot from Aus Air Australia, said he had known Mr Liddell for more than 30 years.
He said Mr Liddell was a “meticulous” pilot and aircraft mechanic, and an all-round kind man.
“Anthony is one of the true gentlemen of aviation,” Mr Guerry said.
“You could not wish for a nicer guy. I just can’t believe he is gone.”
Mr Guerry said Mr Liddell had trained at Moorabbin before carving out a successful career as an aircraft maintenance engineer.
Mr Liddell was said to be very experienced and familiar with the area.
He praised the pilot’s actions in avoiding risk to Scarlet St residents.
“Not only have his mechanical skills excelled, his piloting abilities have excelled because he’s managed to hurt no one else,” Mr Guerry said.
Mr Liddell is a married dad with two kids, a boy and a teen girl, and was a well-respected member of the Mt Martha community where he gave his time to local sporting groups.
Family photographs showed the keen fisherman and mad Richmond supporter spending time outdoors with his children, proudly showing off their achievements at school, football, dance and lifesaving.
On weekends he would spend his time watching the kids at sport and had previously volunteered as an AusKick coach at Mt Martha Junior Football Club.
Mt Martha Junior Football Club President James Barrett said the loss of Mr Liddell would be felt widely.
“It’s surreal,” Mr Barrett said.
“It’s going to take a bit of time (to come to terms with the loss). It’s going to hit hard within the community.”
He said Mr Liddell was always willing to lend a hand and spent his Saturdays watching his son playing football for the Under 11s.
“He has certainly been actively involved in training and helping out on game day,” Mr Barrett.
“Whatever spare time he had he often gave to the football club — first one there, last one out, kind of thing.
“He’s an honest guy, down to earth.”
As a mark of respect, CAE has grounded its planes for the weekend.
CAE general manager Michael Drinkall sent an email to all staff early this morning expressing “deep regret” over the tragedy.
He confirmed the crash happened during a routine maintenance check flight.
“Operations were notified immediately and enacted the Emergency Response Plan. The company is cooperating fully and working closely with the relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident,” he said.
All flights and classes would be cancelled through the weekend at Moorabbin, Mr Drinkall wrote.
The company also grounded flights at its school in Tamworth, NSW.
ATSB executive director Nat Nagy said investigators would likely be on scene for several days before returning to Canberra to process evidence.
Mr Nagy said it could be weeks before investigators could pinpoint the cause of the crash.
“We can confirm that when the aircraft was on approach to land ... it made a turn prior to colliding with the ground, destroying the aircraft,” he said.
Suggestions that Mr Liddell may have been trying to land at a nearby oval were just speculation, Mr Nagy said.
Investigators will pore over the plane’s wreckage, flight logs, air traffic control recordings and radar data to determine what caused the crash.
Mr Nagy urged witnesses who had yet to speak to investigators to come forward.
“Our goal is to look at what happened in the hope it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
Today it emerged that the doomed aircraft was on a test flight after undergoing maintenance.
Mr Liddell was flying a single-engine Cessna 172 aircraft that came down in Scarlet St, Mordialloc just after 5pm on Friday.
The plane was in the air for one hour and seven minutes before it crashed in the suburban street.
Weather is not expected form part of reasons behind the crash as flying conditions had been deemed safe and “fine”.
Sources say complicating the investigation is the fireball that engulfed the plane.
Most clues that could lead investigators to why it happened are likely to have perished.
There is also no flight recorder on board, as it is not a requirement in such planes, so any distress during the flight have not been captured by the black box.
Flight tracking details show the plane took off at 4:06pm from Moorabbin Airport and its crash landing happened at 5.13pm, after it had done a near loop.
The plane’s wreckage remains at the scene this afternoon under police guard while investigators from the ATSB have begun interviewing witnesses.
Residents of the sleepy street have begun gathering near the crash swapping stories about last night’s drama.
Brian Colbey was one of the first people on the scene after hearing the plane come down outside his home.
He described a tragic last ditch effort by residents with garden hoses trying to put out the blaze that had consumed the plane.
“It was just a huge bang impacting the ground and then flames came up and I thought maybe we can get someone out of there … But we had to get back when all the black smoke came up,” he said.
Mr Colbey said the possibility of a crash was in the back of his mind “every time they fly over”.
“I’ve been waiting for this to happen for 30 years,” he said. “The poor fellow did a good job to land in the street.
“There are a lot of beautiful young families in this street and many would now be thinking about moving.”
Sonia Anioniou, who has lived in Scarlet St for 40 years, said it was time for the airport to go.
“We are so sick of worrying about a plane coming down, it’s just too dangerous,” she said.
David Trotter lives just metres from the crash site with his partner Louise and toddler son Zephyr.
“It should absolutely be moved, there are a lot of beginner pilots learning there and that needs to be restricted,” he said.
Mr Trotter said the area had changed dramatically.
“When they built that airport, there were no homes here, the suburb of Dingley didn’t exist,” he said.
He said the pilot was a “hero” for avoiding homes in the street.
“That’s what they’re trained for. His instinct would have kicked in,” Mr Trotter said.
#BREAKING a solo pilot has died following a light plane crash in Mordialloc. A child care centre, just metres from the scene has been evacuated. @tamsinroses @theheraldsun pic.twitter.com/pdmQsK7CZh
— Brittany Goldsmith (@brittgoldsmith2) June 8, 2018
Residents of the street have long been concerned a plane would come down on their doorstep, after a four-seater plane clipped a roof around the corner and brought down powerlines in 2010 before landing in another backyard.
They had then asked the federal government to cap the number of training flights from the airport.
Neighbours on Friday say the plane bounced off a fence as it came down, hit a car and just missed a house before bursting into flames in the middle of the street.
A nearby childcare centre was evacuated and power was cut to many homes in the neighbourhood.
The single-engine plane came down directly out the front of a house belonging to Vlad, who did not give his surname.
He was at home with his wife, 11-month-old daughter and mother in law.
“It was like a bomb went off,” he told the Herald Sun.
“The pilot never had a chance. It would have been instant. The plane came down, touched the back of my car and stopped. It burnt the car.
“I was hosing it down from my fence, trying to save my car and the pilot.
“We’re all very lucky. You don’t expect this to happen outside your front gate.”
Scarlet St resident Justin Vance, 42, was one of the first on the scene.
“We saw the power lines move and we ran outside and saw a ball of flames,” he told the Herald Sun.
“It was all over by the time we got out there — just a big ball of flames.”
Another witness said he heard a “big bang” and grabbed a hose from a front yard in an attempt to put the flames out.
Sources familiar with the plane say the Cessna 172 was on a test run from a local pilot training school after undergoing maintenance.
“Whatever went wrong, it didn’t make it to the runway and early signs point towards engine failure,” the source said.
He said that, despite apparent efforts to correct the plane and get it back on track, the plane came down in the middle of the road, narrowly missing ploughing through homes.
A number of residents believed the pilot, understood to be an aviation engineer, had heroically steered away from properties as the plane went down.
“He realised there was a control problem, he tried to make a U-turn back, he realised he couldn’t and went to look for the safest place to land,” resident Marius said.
The crash site is less than 1km from the runway at Moorabbin Airport, and 25km south of Melbourne CBD.
Scarlet St is just metres away from the southern end of the Moorabbin Airport runway.
Mordialloc resident Jane Treacy, 48, was driving her kids home from school along the Nepean Highway when she heard a noise and saw a plume of black smoke.
“I had the windows down and we could smell the burning fuel. It was a massive ball of black smoke,” she said.
Another resident said: “Someone said the plane bounced off the front fence of a house as it came down, just missing the house.”
Another resident said he could see the plane’s burnt-out cockpit in the middle of the street.
“By the look of it, he must have already been pretty low when he came down, rather than plunging from a great height,” the neighbour said.
“Someone said the plane bounced off the front fence of a house as it came down, just missing the house.”
Another neighbour, Robert Fox, said he saw firemen hosing down the burning plane, after sirens alerted him to the crash across the street.
“It was very intense, it was very strong. I guess it was the fuel tank,” he said.
Peter Hausler was at home when he heard the crash outside, and said he thought the pilot tried to avoid the buildings.
“It missed the house by a few metres,” Mr Hausler said.
“People were trying to get close to it. The flames were massive.”
Kingston City councillor Geoff Gledhill said he spoke to a Scarlet St resident who claimed the plane struck a house and landed on the street, hitting a car.
Dozens of residents have also been left without power after the crash.
Police are investigating the incident and will prepare a report for the coroner, who attended the scene about 9.30pm.
The exact cause of the crash will be investigated by Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
A trail of fire lighting up the Mordialloc neighbourhood led horrified emergency crews to tragedy as they fought the blaze to get to the body of the pilot.
The ATSB on Friday night said: “Investigators will examine the wreckage, gather any available recorded data and interview any witnesses, among other activities.”
Melbourne was the scene of another shocking fatal plane crash last year, when a chartered plane flying to King Island, Tasmania, ploughed into the roof of the Essendon DFO on February 21. The pilot and four American golfers were killed.
A man was also killed in a light plane crash at Clyde North in Melbourne’s southeast after it crashed in a paddock last August.
And a Piper Aircraft departing from Moorabbin Airport smashed into waters off the Bellarine Peninsula in 2016, killing all four people on board on January 29.
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