Human error and adverse weather conditions caused the airplane crash which claimed the life of former national cricket captain Hansie Cronje in June 2002, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said on Thursday.
Concluding its investigation into the crash which happened in the mountains near George in the Western Cape, the CAA said: ”The report indicates the probable causes of the accident to be human factor-related, with weather and mechanical as well as technological factors contributing.”
The CAA further said in the executive summary of the report that the pilot of the Hawker Siddeley aircraft had to execute an instrument guided approach of the landing at the George Aerodrome due to overcast and rainy weather.
”The ground based Instrument Landing System (ILS) on Runway 29 at George Aerodrome was intermittently unreliable during the approach. The pilots decided to execute a missed approach.”
During the missed approach, the pilots did not stick to the published missed approach procedure, the CAA said. Due to a combination of strong winds and ”possible erroneous heading indications” they became lost.
”They flew the aircraft into a valley and crashed into the side of the mountains north-east of the George Aerodrome.”
According to an analysis of information, the pilots of the aircraft failed to pick up an aural identification signal from the Instrument Landing System at the Aerodrome. It was a point of concern, the CAA said, that the ILS appeared to have been off when the aircraft approached the Aerodrome. The pilots, however, did not comment on that, since the aircraft instrumentation indicated that the ILS was intermittently operational.
”This probably made the pilots believe that it might have been the coded aural signal that was malfunctioning, although they did not mention it.”
Only afterwards did the pilot-in-command comment that the ILS appeared to have been malfunctioning.
During the final approach to the landing strip, the co-pilot commented that they were ”miles too fast”. The pilot-in-command called for a missed approach possibly because he could not see the runway clearly enough to execute a safe landing. After the missed approach, the pilots apparently plotted a flight path, which turned out to have been incorrect due to several factors.
The strong wind played a role and it appeared that one of the directional indicators called a ”gyroscope” on the aircraft was also malfunctioning.
”The aircraft impacted the side of the mountain… The aircraft was destroyed during this impact.
”The pilots and passenger suffered multiple injuries during the impact. The accident was considered as unsurvivable.” – Sapa