Pilot error key in telco boss’s fatal crash, authority claims
Natalie Akoorie
Pilot error is the main cause of a plane crash that killed 2degrees boss Eric Hertz and his wife Kathy in 2013, the Civil Aviation Authority has asserted at a Coroner’s Court inquest into the couple’s deaths.
But Hertz’ brother Eli Hertz, a United States Navy and test pilot, has submitted that an engineering error during modification of the twin-engine Beechcraft Baron caused the power failure that led to the crash over the ocean near Raglan on Easter weekend that year.
Eli Hertz maintained his brother was a competent pilot who would have had to overcome a series of difficult issues simultaneously while flying in cloud to keep the plane from stalling and going into a spin.
But CAA safety investigator Dan Foley said according to radar plot times Hertz, 59, had 38 seconds to recognise that power to the left engine had reduced, causing the plane to “trim” or point its nose up and reduce speed and acceleration.
Foley said Hertz should have noticed from the controls on his panel and a warning sound that the plane was nosing up and needed to be taken off auto-pilot and corrected by pushing hard on the weighted controls.
But instead the plane began a slow descent for 19 seconds followed by a faster descent and then a spin that it could not recover from.
The plane sunk 56 metres to the bottom of the ocean and was recovered eight days later with Hertz and his wife, who was 64, both inside the wreckage.
Under cross-examination Eli Hertz asked if his brother had responded appropriately in a similar incident on March 8, just weeks before the tragedy, when as the pilot of his foreignregistered aircraft he managed to keep the plane under control and land it safely when one of the engines failed.
Foley said he believed if the engineer had not been in the cockpit helping Hertz that a crash would have occurred then.
Eli Hertz also asked Foley if it was best practice that a tube fitted by an engineer as part of the modifications to add turbo chargers to the engines earlier that month was not adequately clamped, to which Foley said no.
He asked if that could have caused the 17 per cent reduction in power to the upper deck line and Foley said the CAA could not find enough evidence to prove or disprove that theory.
The fact that Hertz hid from a CAA-approved doctor that he was on medication for a mental health disorder was also canvassed at the hearing in the Hamilton District Court yesterday.
Coroner Gordon Matenga asked Dr Anthony Wiles whether during the extensive health checks required by pilots to obtain medical certificates permitting them to fly, a pilot’s medical records from their GP should be included.
But Wiles said the system relied on pilots being honest, which Hertz wasn’t when he lied on a health questionnaire about the anxiety condition he was taking Duloxetine for.