Seaplane tragedy: 48 have died in the same model in last ten years
THE same model of seaplane which crashed in Australia has been involved in 17 fatal smashes in the past decade.
Five British tourists and the pilot died on New Year’s Eve in a 55- year- old De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, taking the toll to 48 deaths.
The plane is thought to have nose- dived into a river near Sydney after it took a steep turn to the right at low altitude.
Police believe 58- year- old Richard Cousins, the retiring chief executive of the £25 billion Compass catering firm, his sons Will, 25, and Edward, 23; his fiancee Emma Bowden, 48, her 11-year- old daughter Heather and pilot Gareth Morgan, 44, died almost instantly when the plane hit the water.
The same model of aircraft that was chartered by the family, from Tooting in south-west London, has been involved in a total of 47 crashes in the past ten years, aviation figures show.
A similar seaplane crashed in Canada in August 2015 after stalling during a steep turn.
In that incident, Fiona Hewitt, 52, her husband Richard, 50, and children Harry, 14 and Felicity, 17, all from Milton Keynes, died, along with another passenger and the pilot.
Australian investigators are trying to establish if the latest crash was caused by the singleengine seaplane stalling after banking too steeply.
Analysis of crash data from around the world shows that 11 of the crashes involving the same type of seaplane in the past ten years took place in Canada, killing 32.
Four took place in the US, killing eight and one person died in a crash in Iceland.
The last fatal crash in Australia involving a DHC-2 Beaver took place in 1994 when the pilot died as he was spreading fertiliser over farmland.
In the worst previous incident over the past decade, six died – including a baby – when a plane came down in Lyall Harbour in Canada. The pilot and a female passenger survived.
Four months ago, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada raised concerns about the same type of aircraft stalling in mid-air. It called for all commercial DHC-2s in Canada to be fitted with a stall warning alarm as ‘a last line of defence’.
It is not clear if the Australian plane which crashed at 3.10pm on Sunday in the Hawkesbury River had such a system.
Aviation expert David Learmount said a pilot of Mr Morgan’s experience would not have stalled ‘unless something has gone very wrong’.
He said: ‘It may well have banked too steeply, but I’d want to know why this happened, because experienced pilots don’t perform such a manoeuvre at such a low altitude.’
In the Canadian crash in 2015, the aircraft ‘stalled in a steep turn’ and hit a rocky outcrop, killing the Hewitt family, who were on a tour of Quebec.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said all incidents involving the same model of plane would be looked into as part of its investigation.
Mr Cousins and Miss Bowden were planning to marry in July. He lost his wife Caroline to cancer two and a half years ago.
Ian Thorpe, the brother of Mr Cousins’ first wife, said: ‘It is with such cruel irony that Richard’s brothers will be planning funerals for five instead of looking forward to a summer wedding.’