Pilot's hunch leads to discovery of missing plane

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 2, Issue 22, 30 October 1984, Page 1

Pilot's hunch leads to discovery of

missing plane

Founder and managing director of Wanganui Aero Work, Richmond Harding, was one of the pilots who took part in the extensive search for the missing Grumman Cheetah with three Wellington people aboard. In this picture (right) he is seen before taking off from the Raetihi airstrip with his daughter Debra who was acting as observer during the Labour Weekend search. They were flying the Raetihi-based top-dressing Fletcher usually flown by Wanganui Aero Work pilot Mackay George who was away. It was Richmond harding and fellow crew member Chris Wolff, WAW operations manager from Wanganui, who discovered the wreckage at about 2.20 last Tuesday afternoon when they were flying back from Rotorua to Taihape just as a decision was being made at search headquarters in Raetihi about whether to continue the search. "Richmond was "following a hunch" when he decided to take a closer look at that rugged countryside about 15kms south of the Turangi

airfield from which the illfated plane had taken off. The wreckage was found in dense bush on a steep hillside to the east of the Tongariro River between Rangipo and the Pillars of Hercules and about 2kms in from the Poutu intake. It was surrounded by about an acre of burnt-out bush indicating that it had caught fire on impact. A police party from Taupo reached the scene on T uesday evsning and reported that two bodies had been discovered in the wreckage. The following morning a third body was found on a steep hillside below the wreckage. All three were . brought out on Wednesday and taken to Palmerston North for post mortems. John Funnell of Helicopter Services NZ Ltd, who coordinated Philips Electrical privately funded Labour Weekend search, said from Taupo last Thursday that this latest tragedy reinforced the need for all aircraft to carry ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) beacons at all times. "We could have found that plane in an hour-and-a-

half if its beacon had been operational after impact. Instead, we had to split our efforts on both sides of the mountain and used up to nineteen aircraft for nearly a week at an estimated cost of $100,000," he said. "It would have helped too if the pilot who had been flying another plane over the Waimarino that day — and we are sure there was one in the air because the sightings and reports were too frequent and reliable to ignore — was to have identified himself so that we could have concentrated our efforts south of Turangi," said Mr Funnell. The ELT beacon normally carried aboard the missing Wellington Aero Club Grumman Cheetah had been removed for servicing the week before the fatal flight and, because of a delay in the availability of replacement parts, was not due to be re-installed until last week. The inspector of air accidents visited the crash site last week. A tribute to the search-and-rescue teams appears onpage 8.