Days of Thunder
The mission was typical Northern Territory general aviation. The aircraft was a Cessna 210, the workhorse of the north; the flight was from Darwin to Elcho Island, the cargo was a coffin and they were going VFR. What was not typical was that the flight lasted for only 26 minutes and got barely 20 nm away from the departure point.
VH-HWY crashed into the ground near Howard Springs, east of Darwin. Witnesses described it rotating down in a flat attitude with a portion of each wing missing. The two pilots didn’t stand much of a chance.
The ATSB later concluded the aircraft wing had been overloaded due to airspeed, control inputs and turbulence. A more chilling conclusion followed.
“… the pilots had no experience flying in the ‘build-up’ to the wet season in the Darwin area. Although pairing a supervisory pilot with a pilot new to the company was likely to reduce risk in other instances, in this case it did not adequately address the weather-related risks because neither pilot had experience flying in the region during the wet season.”
Build-up. It’s a phenomenon that doesn’t plague pilots that have cut their teeth in the relatively sedate sky of the south of Australia. It’s the time when the atmosphere in our northern regions is preparing itself for the onslaught of monsoonal storms that come in October and leave in April. Clearly the weather is “building up” to something, and it’s
