Top student in plane crash

The pilot of a small plane which overshot the runway, clipped a fence and landed in scrub near Omaka Airfield yesterday has been described as a top flying student.

The pilot and a fellow student, both from India, escaped with minor injuries after the 10.30am crash.

They were taken to Wairau Hospital where they were treated and discharged yesterday.

A St John Ambulance spokesman said the 22-year-old pilot suffered minor leg injuries and his 18-year-old passenger suffered minor head injuries.

The four-seater Cessna 172 came from Feilding and was registered to Air Manawatu. The wreckage of the plane was removed by this morning.

Air Manawatu chief executive Michael Bryant said the pilot was one of the airline's top students, with more than 100 hours of flying experience.

Mr Bryant flew to Omaka as soon as he heard about the crash and took the students home yesterday afternoon.

He said the students were from India. The pilot had been in the country for about seven months of a planned 10 month stay, while the younger man had only been in New Zealand for a month.

He said they were here specifically to do the course.

Mr Bryant could not comment on the cause of the crash but said Air Manawatu would "most certainly" be conducting its own investigation.

Two ambulances, and six fire appliances from Woodbourne, Renwick and Blenheim attended the scene where the plane crashed.

Sergeant John Butson of Blenheim police said the Cessna was landing in a southeasterly direction on the runway. It failed to come to a stop and clipped a fence between the airfield and the road.

The plane gathered height and crashed some 150m from the end of the runway, he said.

Wreckage of the plane was scattered around where it landed. The nose was pointing down and the tail was suspended above a fence on the edge of a bank overlooking the Taylor River.

Alistair Haigh was one of several Omaka Aero Club members who raced to the crash site with fire extinguishers "expecting the worst".

"We all saw it come in down-wind really really quick and low.

"We saw it might not make it, then it went down and touched the ground before going up again and clipping the fence."

Pilot John Evans was about to take off in his homebuilt plane when he saw the Cessna coming in to land with the wind behind it.

Landing down wind instead of into it "makes a lot of difference to your speed across the ground", Mr Evans said.

"I heard this guy call final approach so I naturally looked out expecting to see him out there but there was no sign of him," he said.

"He made a mistake obviously and had about 20 knots of wind up his rear end which doesn't do much for your landing distance."

He radioed the Cessna's pilot to warn him but said the plane came "whistling past" going "far too fast" with the wind.

Mr Evans then radioed the airfield's control tower and rushed to the crashed plane with a first aid kit to find the occupants standing beside it.

"They were very lucky boys," he said.

Civil Aviation Authority communications manager Bill Sommer said one investigator arrived in Blenheim about an hour after the accident and another arrived late yesterday afternoon to inspect the wreckage.

He said the fact the crew were able to talk to investigators was a "great advantage" and meant the investigation should be completed in two to three weeks.

However, he could not comment on early indications of the cause.

"We don't like to speculate about what other people have said."

As the crash was fairly minor, with nobody seriously hurt, the results would probably only be published on the CAA's website. Mr Sommer said the investigation was simply to see if lessons could be learned from what happened.

"We're trying to work out what caused the crash - we're not apportioning blame. That's not what we're here to do."

Omaka Airfield's runway was closed for about 40 minutes after the crash.

- The Marlborough Express