The Australian
THE airline involved in the Lockhart River plane crash deceived the Civil Aviation Safety Authority by fabricating forms about the performance of its pilots, an inquest into the disaster heard yesterday.
Peter McGee, who worked as a senior pilot with Transair for almost 10 years until the airline was grounded last year, said the crash that claimed 15 lives could have been avoided if the airline had subjected its pilots to proper checks.

Mr McGee told the coronial inquiry into one of Australia’s worst air disasters that the North Queensland airline that operated the doomed aircraft required pilots to sign blank proficiency forms and send them to head office in Brisbane.

He said the forms were requested by the airline’s operations manager in Brisbane, Dianne Kelly, under the direction of Transair director and chief pilot Les Wright.

Mr McGee said that when CASA planned to audit an airline, it would usually give thecompany about a month’s notice. It was common practice at all airlines to “run around and get their files in order” when they received notice of an audit. In Transair’s case, notice of an audit was usually a trigger for Ms Kelly to ring the company’s pilots and ask them to sign and send the blank proficiency forms, Mr McGee said.

Under CASA rules, pilots were required to undergo two “check” flights a year under supervision to assess their proficiency. Mr McGee said it was the standard practice at Transair for details of a routine flight to be retrospectively regarded as a check flight and recorded on the proficiency form.
Senior pilot Brett Hotchin, 40, and co-pilot Timothy Down, 21, were among those killed when a Transair Metroliner crashed near Lockhart River in far north Queensland on May 7, 2005. It was Australia’s worst airline disaster in 40 years.

A report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, released in April, blamed pilot error and poor maintenance for the crash.

Mr McGee said he believed that if the company’s pilots had been properly assessed, Hotchin and Down might not have been rostered together for the ill-fated flight and the accident might not have happened.

Mr McGee said that while Down was relatively inexperienced, Hotchin was not from an instruction or training background. “He was very definite in the way the aircraft was flown. It wasn’t an ideal training environment for Flight Officer Down,” he said.

The inquest, in Brisbane, continues today