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Air Safety An Unforgettable Experience
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An Unforgettable Experience!
A one-time passenger relates the story of a charter flight that went frighteningly wrong — with consequences that were nearly the end of them all. Three of us in Wollongong had arranged to charter a small aeroplane from the nearby airfield at Albion Park to take us out to Griffith for the day. We needed to be in Griffith soon after 9am, so we planned to take off from Albion Park about 7 o’clock. The pilot would then wait for us at Griffith and fly us back home late in the afternoon. The weather on the morning of the trip wasn’t brilliant — it was overcast, and there were rain showers about, but there was no low cloud, so we went ahead with our plans. The aeroplane turned out to be a small Cessna — a four seater 172. Our pilot was a young flying instructor who had plenty of get up and go and seemed to know what he was doing, so we considered ourselves to be in good hands. We got off from Albion Park at 7.05am, climbed up to cruise at 5000 feet and, apart from a bit of dodging around patches of heavy rain from time to time, the trip went off without a hitch.
Late that afternoon, when the taxi dropped us back at the little aerodrome terminal building just after 4.30pm (the time the pilot had specified — explaining to us that we needed to be back at Albion Park before dark), we found him talking on the telephone. When he finally hung up, he told us he had been obtaining a weather forecast — and that it wasn’t too good. Although the weather at Griffith was still much the same as it had been all day, the forecast the pilot had been given indicated that, towards the ranges and the coast, visibility would be reduced in rain and low cloud, and that some thunderstorms were likely. The conditions were being produced by a moist easterly airstream from an offshore low, so we could expect headwinds of about 20 knots (37km/h) for most of the trip home. The pilot calculated that our return flight to Wollongong would take about two hours 15 minutes. Without any more delay we all trooped out to the Cessna, settled ourselves in our seats, and the pilot started the engine. By the time we were taking off again, it was just 4.45pm. Again we climbed up to 5000 feet, and the pilot told us we should reach Albion Park at 7pm. As sunset was at about 7.25pm, we expected to be there well before dark, even with the cloudy conditions.
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