Old bus failed multiple inspections

The bus that crashed on Mt Ruapehu on Saturday was 24 years old, had done more than 270,000 kilometres and had failed nine inspections in a decade.

The 1994 Mitsubishi Fuso bus crashed on its way down from the Turoa skifield on Saturday, killing 11-year-old Hannah Teresa Francis, of Auckland, and injuring 20 others.

Passengers said it appeared the brakes had failed. A police crash investigation is under way.

Several people have complained about the state of some of the buses being used by Ruapehu Alpine Lifts (RAL) to ferry passengers to Turoa and Whakapapa skifields.

Wellington woman Jane Ye, a frequent mountain visitor, said she caught the same bus on the Saturday morning.

‘‘It’s old, it’s very, very old,’’ she said. Even though she caught the bus up the mountain she said she didn’t trust it, so caught a ride with someone else back down.

Ye wrote to local council and Government officials last year over concerns with the bus service. She said RAL did a good job with what it had, but its money went into making the mountain safe for skiing, not the buses.

RAL said it would not comment on the state of the bus while an investigation was under way. The Japanese import bus failed Certificate of Fitness inspections nine times between 2005 and 2016, but the reasons for failing were not given. It had a current certificate when it crashed.

The vehicle had done 277,885km as of May 31. An AA vehicle history report on the bus noted it had ‘‘inconsistent’’ odometer readings.

The reading went backwards from 199,639km in July, 2010 to 118,044km in May, 2011.

The report says the odometer may have gone around-the-clock and reset back to zero, it may have been tampered with and manually wound-back by someone or the reading has been incorrectly entered into the records.