Nine People Fatally Injured When Skydiving Plane Went Down Near Fox Glacier

A coroner's report indicates that an accident involving a skydiving plane near Fox Glacier in New Zealand may have been affected by a mechanical failure, removing some of the blame for the accident from the pilot.

New Zealand's Transportation Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) said in its report that the accident was due to overloading of the Skydive Fox Glacier airplane. According to that report, "modification to the aircraft had been poorly managed, and discrepancies in the (airplane's)documentation had not been detected by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which had approved the change in category.

"The new owner and operator of the airplane had not completed any weight and balance calculations on the airplane before it entered service, nor at any time before the accident. As a result the airplane was being flown outside its loading limits every time it carried a full load of 8 parachutists.

"On the accident flight the center of gravity of the airplane was well rear of its aft limit and it became airborne at too low a speed to be controllable. The pilot was unable to regain control and the airplane continued to pitch up, then rolled left before striking the ground nearly vertically."

The French news service AFP reports that Coroner Richard McElrea also found that the airplane, a Fletcher FU24 cropduster converted to a skydiving platform, was overloaded and out of its CG envelope when the accident occurred, but added that "something unusual, such as inadvertent pilot error or engine malfunction/mechanical failure, has occurred at take-off."

Pilot Rob Miller had been a partial owner of Skydive Fox Glacier. New Zealand's Newstalk ZB reports that his widow, Robyn Jacobs, says she hopes that the coroner's report will help clear her husband's name. But TAIC says that its report will stand. Chief investigator Tim Burfoot said the report was the result of an "exhaustive investigation."

(Image provided by the New Zealand TAIC)

FMI: TAIC Report