Gday
Front Page Geelong Advertiser.
I'M GUILTY: SKYDIVER
Wednesday, July 7
NATALIE STAAKS
SKYDIVE City owner Luke McWilliam yesterday pleaded guilty to 21 aviation safety breaches before later backpedalling and claiming he was innocent.
McWilliam is to pay $10,000 to Geelong Hospital and was yesterday given a 12-month good behaviour bond and a warning to take care of his parachuting students.
Geelong Magistrates' Court was told the Civil Aviation Safety Authority had seized more than 20 videos from Barwon Heads' Skydive City Club which showed students dropping through cloud cover.
The videos, which students paid for as part of their parachuting experience, showed the cloud cover on certain occasions before and during the jump, the court heard.
One charge related to the maintenance of the plane, when investigators saw the inner tube of a toilet roll gaffer-taped to the outside as a marker for where a real handle would later be fixed.
Concerns about the safety of parachutists and others using the Barwon Heads airport prompted CASA to place a ban on Skydive City dropping parachutists within two miles of the airport.
But after court McWilliam claimed he was innocent of the charges and pleaded guilty for financial reasons.
The court had heard it would cost McWilliam about $25,000 to defend the charges in a trial and he later said he preferred to give money to a Geelong charity.
John Maitland, for McWilliam, told the court that of 20,000 jumps taken by the Barwon Heads company in the last three or four years there had been no problems except for ``an unfortunate but unrelated incident''.
Clare Barnes, the daughter of a high-profile British television newsreader and politician, plummeted to her death above Connewarre in March.
Her parachute failed to open. An inquest into her death is yet to be held.
In sentencing McWilliam yesterday without conviction for the unrelated safety breaches, magistrate Terry Wilson said he had been put on notice and would have to be especially careful to abide by the regulations.
``It is there for safety quite clearly . . . that being the case your role as an instructor is to ensure that the safety of your students is paramount,'' he said.
A CASA spokesman said the Skydive City ban on dropping parachutists near the airport remains in place.
But he said positive mediation between McWilliam and other users of the airport had taken place and a decision on the ban would be forthcoming.
There's nothing like publicity, made it to both Melbourne papers should help the punters make an informed decision on who to or not skydive with and the instrument is still in place.
I'm still smiling
Cheers Q