I never met you Bernie, but I know on listening in-person to the PelAir inquiry of the effects of a regulator who hid things and failed in properly surveilling the operator - PelAir
I know Bernie that all those involved in the ditching were seriously traumatised.
Norfolk air crash survivors: OUR PILOT WAS NO HERO
Woman's Day (Australian Consolidated Press); 3/15/2010, Vol. 62 Issue 11, p32
The article discusses the survival experience of a couple Bernie Curral and Gary Curral during an air crash. The Melbourne, Victoria based, couple spend a night full of horror when the CareFlight plane immersed into the ocean.
Bernie says that she has a recurring nightmare that she is outside the plane in the water and screaming for Gary. Gary does not agree when media praises the pilot despite the crash and now believes in miracles.
Also in
Doomed
Friday, March 5, 2010
MICHAEL USHER - STORY: It's a confronting image - the wreck of Pel-Air November Golf Alpha wedged in the sand on the floor of the Pacific, its final resting place after a night or terror in the skies over Norfolk Island. Six people were on board that night when the twin-engined jet slammed into the ocean on a flight from Samoa to Norfolk.
GARY CURRALL: I wondered how would I die. I wondered would the plane disintegrate, would it explode. You're questioning how it is you're going to go.
MICHAEL USHER: For the first time, Gary Currall and his wife, Bernie, describe the horror of those final moments.
BERNIE CURRALL: You were fighting for your life, you were fighting for your breath. It was horrendous. It was traumatic. It was horrific.
MICHAEL USHER: And three months on, the Curralls want answers. You see, the plane simply ran out of fuel and had to ditch at sea.
BERNIE CURRALL: We nearly died. I thought I'd lost my husband and I thought I was never going to see my kids again. It was just so wrong on so many levels and, yeah, I'm bloody angry about it.