SEAPLANE’S DEADLY NOSEDIVE
Doomed aircraft may have banked too steeply before crash that killed 5 Britons and the pilot, say experts
THE seaplane which crashed in Australia – killing five British tourists and the pilot – may have stalled after banking too steeply, experts said yesterday.
Witnesses described seeing the aircraft nose-dive into the water after it had banked to the right at low altitude.
It sunk within seconds, killing millionaire company boss Richard Cousins, 58, his sons Will, 25, and Edward, 23; his fiancee Emma Bowden, 48, and her 11-year- old daughter Heather. Pilot Gareth Morgan, 44, also died in the New Year’s Eve tourist flight.
Mr Cousins, the chief executive of Compass, the world’s largest contract catering company, and Miss Bowden were planning to marry in July, and had recently sent out invitations. He lost his wife Caroline to cancer two and a half years ago.
Kevin Bowe, of the Seaplane Pilots’ Association of Australia, said the most likely cause of the crash was the single- engine DHC- 2 Beaver banking too steeply or too slowly.
‘It is quite hilly in that area and a downdraft may have caught the pilot out,’ he said. ‘If you get a situation like this and it nosedives, it goes straight to the bottom.’
Mr Morgan did not have time to make a mayday call before the plane plunged into the Hawkesbury River off Jerusalem Bay, some 30 miles north of Sydney.
The group had enjoyed lunch at a restaurant in a national park before embarking on their return journey shortly after 3pm to watch the fireworks in Sydney. Todd Sellars, a holiday-maker on a houseboat 160ft from the crash site, said: ‘ I was with friends on the houseboat when the plane just nosedived into the water. I jumped into the water and tried to open the door. I ran my hands down through the windows but I couldn’t open the door – it was sinking too fast.’
Canadian-born pilot Mr Morgan had logged more than 10,000 hours’ flight time, 9,000 of which were on seaplanes, and friends said he knew the route ‘like the back of his hand’.
The plane was used by the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister Pippa Middleton and her husband James Matthews during their honeymoon in June. The flights, operated by Sydney Seaplanes, are scheduled to last 20 minutes each way.
Singer Ed Sheeran, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have all taken trips in the company’s planes. All excursions have been suspended by the firm, which had previously had an ‘unblemished’ safety record. The wreckage of the plane is still submerged in 40ft of water, but all six bodies Experienced: Pilot Gareth Morgan in a photo taken hours before he was killed have been recovered. Mr Cousins, dubbed ‘the greatest businessman of his generation’, had been chief executive of the FTSE 100 firm Compass Group in Surrey since 2006 – and had been due to retire in September. He was ranked No 11 in the world’s 100 best-performing CEOs last year by Harvard Business Review after his company turned a £1.6 billion profit.
Miss Bowden was the art editor at OK! magazine in Tooting, south London. Will Cousins was the head of press for Open Britain, which campaigns against a hard Brexit, while Edward was due to join the police. Mr Cousins brought his sons up with his late wife in a £1.7 million country home in Hyde Heath, near Amersham, Buckinghamshire. A neighbour revealed he had received invitations for Mr Cousins’s wedding just a few days ago.
He said the marriage was scheduled for July 21 and that an engagement party was planned for March. Mr Cousins’s sons were to be best men and Heather was to be her mother’s bridesmaid. He added: ‘Richard was so looking forward to the wedding – he was as happy as can be.’
Ian Thorpe, the brother of Mr Cousins’s late wife, Caroline,
‘It was sinking too fast’ ‘I couldn’t open the door’
said the crash ‘wiped out nearly all my family’.
He added: ‘Richard was always very loving. He made my sister very happy.’
Sydney Seaplanes boss Aaron Shaw said the cause of the crash was unknown. Weather conditions for the flight were ‘perfect’, the plane’s engines had been checked, and the pilot was experienced and under no pressure.
In August 2015, a British family of four were killed when the same model of aircraft crashed in Canada after it stalled during a steep turn. A report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada in September mentions 31 deaths in nine separate fatal incidents in which the seaplane stalled and crashed.