2 dead in Vic NW of Melb at Wallup
 

Heraldsun.com.au



UPDATE 10pm: TWO people are dead and another is in a critical condition after a light plane crash near the western Victorian town of Wallup tonight.

Police said a man and a woman were killed in the crash. Another woman is being airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne.*

SES, police and CFA crews started searching the area, located 340km northwest of Melbourne, at about 6.30pm after a local farmer reported seeing a low flying plane before hearing a crash.

Others farmers also joined the search.

It is not yet known where the plane was flying to or from.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been contacted and will investigate the scene in the morning.

*

Two dead in light plane crash - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Looks like a 3rd passenger survived. Wish her well.

Two killed, one critical after plane crashes near Wallup, western Victoria | Herald Sun

Oh how sad:sad: The ABC are quoting this morning on the radio that the flight was an 'AngelFlight' .Possibly EN to Nhill . Whatever the reason for being airborne in bad weather I hope that we can get to the bottom of it & all learn.


Wmk2

www.news.com.au has a pic of the scene and frankly its a miracle that one person has survived at all.

:(

Very sad, I guess the media/public will start again with the "Elderly Pilot" rant like they did with the incident at Tyabb on the weekend.

****e, an Angel flight, what a bloody tragedy. It was her 24th flight and his 25th.

Bad weather, bad light, possible pressure to get the patient home................... the holes begin to line up. :sad:

That.... and the 45 year old aircraft no doubt.

http://angelflight.org.au/media/2011...0Chronicle.pdf

From the angel flight website.

Bad light ? Last light would have been around 6.08pm and there were reports of the a/c heard at 6.15pm.

If this was IFR there should have been no problem with low level scud running, so one must assume it was a VFR and what on earth was this guy thinking? :ugh:

On that basis it will bring a lot of bad light indeed on those who operate properly. Of course that is the case for everyone, from RAA to RPT.

Hey Jab,
have you done any flights for AngelFlight? How strict are their rules wrt NVFR or IFR flight? It seems strange (from a risk management/insurance perspective) to allow a flight such as this to operate NVFR, despite what CASA may allow.

There will be no doubt a lot more to come from this event. Their hearts (AngleFlight) are in the right place with only good intentions & that's a beautiful thing but like most accidents of this nature something perhaps needs to change so that we can reduce the chances of this awful event happening again.
It wasn't very pleasant down this way in Vic last night certainly questionable as to whether being out there in a SE plane NVFR or even IFR for that matter was a clever thing to do.Perhaps the pilot just got caught with his good intentions leading the way. More to come am sure.

May those left behind, the families/friends of all concerned find peace in the near future. I'm not a religious man but if there is a God then he sure does work in mysterious ways.


Wmk2

Sad indeed. I was speaking to the pilot of this particular aircraft around four weeks ago and made comment to him about how nice his aeroplane looked with it's original (recently applied) paint scheme.
He appeared to take a lot of pride in how the aircraft looked and in how it presented. Most unfortunate to see things end up like this.
However, regardless the state of repair of the aircraft it's not a good look for Angel Flight to have flights conducted in a'45 year old' aircraft. We all know in here that that in itself isn't a problem. But for the media and those who react to what the media says and does, it is. As the fleet continues to age, it's an issue that Angel Flight and others, will have to deal with.

I'm fed up with us accepting that the aging aircraft argument has any validity. It only gets a run at all because there is a comparison made with private vehicles with has no basis in logic.

No-one questions the age of commercial watercraft, or private yachts. No-one questions the age of cranes or construction machinery. There isn't even any real criticism of airline aircraft age. Consider the age of the DC-9's 727's 747 classics, twin otters, Fokker Friendships and other aircraft still working commercially around the world.

While many private aircraft date to the seventies, the vast majority (with the exception of school & charter aircraft) have done a fraction of their design flight hours.

My 1972 Alfa has significantly less safety than a modern car because of the advances in brakes, suspension, headlights., demisters, tyres, windscreen wipers, airbags, steering wheels, ABS, crumple zones, laminated windscreens and the list goes on. I would contend that my 1978 Seneca has exactly the same level of safety as one produced by Piper last month - especially since it done about 3 years worth of flying for a charter operator.

Its time we started calling out the ageing aircraft argument for the lie that it is.

There is no indication that this really sad accident has anything to do with it being a single engine aircraft vs a twin (John Faine this morning) or that it was a 1965 model Cherokee 180.

Shooting from the hip here but its nothing to do with aircraft age I reckon.

Sounds like VFR into IMC to me. :sad: Could be very wrong.

And night VFR under those conditions..........well what is the LSALT? not scud running height hey?

AF do screen your requirements, but at the end of the day its the PIC who controls everything.

Having said that.........I get the odd call when a VFR only guy pulls the plug, and I must commend them for doing so.

I have also pulled the pin on IFR flights.....and still gone flying myself elsewhere, but that was by myself for my own purposes. One has to set ones own limits and standards and I set mine based on the friends I keep, long living Airline, RFDS and well Forkie too. High standards indeed but I sleep at night. Follow the rules and the chances of having an accident are very very slim, even s/e IFR.... (Watch Wally bite here :E)

Enough said.

I understand witnesses heard it for a bit before they heard the bang which has been reported as being at about 1830. Impact damage looks to me like the pilot was not in control at the time. Disorientated or inadvertant IMC?

Pilot, teen killed in mercy-flight crash
OMG. When I did my NVFR rating, my instructor told me it was a "Licence to Kill". I can't agree more with Jabawocky and Old Akro because a mere night rating has no place for night flights. A young pilot in a new twin aircraft could easily have ended up in similar tragic circumstances. The night plays all sorts of tricks with the eyes. Let this be a lesson for all of us - nothing short of IFR with full stage reporting would be close to an absolute minimum level of safety.

RIP, and wishing a speedy recovery for the traumatised mother.

Old Akro:

Mate, you are so wrong about this and your post is more full of holes than a swiss cheese, however, did it have anything to do with this tragic event? I don't know, maybe ATSB will find out.

Many of the postulates in your post are actually supportive of aging fleet replacement, rather than refuting them but this is not the time and place to discuss these matters in depth.

Be aware that the 'crashworthiness' of more recently certified aircraft that are designed to comply with dramatically higher safety design standards may not have prevented this event, but may have mitigated the injuries that were sustained in the impact. I said may as i do not know the circumstances, but one of the factors built into new (designed) aircraft is the inherent ability to reduce the incidence of injuries during and after impact. Older designs absolutely do not meet this criteria, no matter how well maintained these aircraft are, as these standards and requirements did not exist when they were designed in the 1960's

A tragic day for the dedicated pilot, his family and in particular the people entrusted to his care and their families.

HD

I was in Sydney yesterday so I have no idea what Melbourne was like, but from the BOM website:
Horsham airport & Nhill Airport reported nil rain between 4pm & 8pm. Longerenong 0.6mm, Stawell 0.8mm over the same period. Warracknabeal does not have hour by hour records but it had 7mm between 3pm yesterday and 9am this morning. All stations in the area had less than 12kts Northerly wind, many in the territory of 5 kts. Don't understand the radio reports of heavy rain unless it was very localised showers.

If the ABC reported location is correct, the aircraft was not on an IFR track. The accident site is approx 20nm North of Horsham where the sector LSALT is 3900ft, but it is very close to the Warrnacknabeal - Nhill track which has a LSALT of 2,200 ft (approx 1,700 ft AGL).

The accident site would be consistent with flying visually through the Kilmore Gap to Bendigo or Mangalore then direct to Nhill. With a setting sun, a cloud base and rising terrain to Ballarat, going North then west behind the higher terrain may have seemed a good cautious option, especially if the Pilot had flown from Yarrawonga during day because it would have been flying back into a "known" area.