A two-day judicial inquest to determine who, if anybody, could be held responsible for the plane crash which claimed the life of Hansie Cronje starts in the Cape High Court on Monday. Judge Siraj Desai will preside.
Cronje, the former captain of the national cricket team, died on June 1 2002, when the Hawker Siddeley 748 aircraft he was travelling in crashed near to George aerodrome en-route from Bloemfontein.
An accident report from the Civil Aviation Authority notes pilot error as a probable cause for the crash into the Vandalenskloof site.
The CAA report said the pilots did not comply with the missed approach procedure and that the combination of strong winds and possible erroneous heading indicated they had ”lost situational awareness”.
”They flew the aircraft into a valley and crashed into the side of the mountains north-east of the George aerodrome,” read the report.
The CAA said contributing factors to the probable cause of the crash were poor weather conditions, the intermittent unreliability of the instrument landing system, the serviceability of the directional gyro and undeclared defects.
Cronje (32), died together with pilot Willie Meyer and co-pilot Ian Noakes. No-one else was injured.
According to the CAA accident report, Meyer was 69-years-old and had flown 20 964 hours, 1 819 of those on the Hawker Siddeley.
A self-proclaimed Christian, Cronje achieved notoriety when he admitted to allegations of cricket match-fixing and admitted receiving gifts and money from bookmakers to fix the results of games.
Cronje was banned from playing or coaching cricket for life, after baring his soul during the King Commission of Inquiry. – Sapa