Pilot error caused the air crash that claimed the life of former South Africa cricket captain Hansie Cronje, an inquest unanimously concluded on Monday.
The presiding officer, Judge Siraj Desai, said it was the court’s view that the death of Cronje was brought about ”by an act or omission prima facie amounting to an offence” on the part of pilots Willem Meyer and Ian Noakes.
Relying heavily on the evidence from Dr Andre de Kock, a senior accident investigator with the Civil Aviation Authority and the only person who testified, Desai said there were several probable causes for the Hawker Siddeley 748 aircraft crashing.
The cargo plane, on which Cronje had hitched a ride, was on its way from Bloemfontein to George when it flew into the Outeniqua mountain range on June 1 2002.
The pilots lost situational awareness in poor weather and deviated from prescribed procedure when trying to execute a ”missed-approach” landing.
Desai said concern had been raised about the intermittent unreliability of the instrument landing system on runway 29 at George airport.
However, it was apparent from the evidence that even with this system down, a pilot could still land an aircraft safely using alternative navigational aids available.
Desai, assisted by Bruce Hyde and Hendrik Venter, said the faulty instrument landing system, a directional gyro not serviceable and other uncleared defects may have been contributing factors, but did not detract from the ”principle cause” of the crash.
Desai found that Meyer (69) and Noakes (49) did not follow instructions contained in the flight-operations manual when trying to land after their initial approach was aborted because the plane was too fast and too high.
He found the pilots also ignored 13 ground-proximity warning system alerts calling for them to ”pull up”.
”Dr de Kock agrees that the complacency of the pilot in command was surprising and concedes that the co-pilot failed under the circumstances to do what a reasonable pilot would have done,” said Desai. — Sapa