Australian Story: June 24

On Monday Australian Story talks to a young woman who lost her fiancé through a joyflight plane crash only to learn that the pilot from the aviation company did not hold a commercial pilot’s license.

Now she awaits the coroner’s findings to see how they will impact on industry regulator CASA, to ensure the tragedy is never repeated.

Monday’s Australian Story is about a young woman, Samantha Hare, who through a plane crash, lost the love of her life, her fiancé Ian Lovell.

If that was not horrific enough, it was Samantha Hare herself who had bought the ticket to fly as a surprise birthday gift.

Despite Samantha Hare’s exhaustive background checking of the pilot Barry Hempel’s aviation company, within an hour of the bodies being recovered, news emerged that turned her world upside down.

“I just remember this real sense of relief that they’ve found Ian, I’m going to have him home and then I got a phone call probably about half an hour later and I was told by someone from the police that it seems that the pilot didn’t have a [commercial] licence and I remember just falling to the ground and to this day I guess that’s kind of where all this has started” — Samantha Hare

Barry Hempel was a high profile and colourful aviator with little time for the authorities. In a climate of regular aviation incidents, CASA, the regulator, was again in the spotlight. Was the fare-paying public safe? What were the wider ramifications?

“When I heard about the fatality it was a shock. But having had previous dealings with Mr Hempel, I couldn’t help but feel that in some ways something like that was always likely to occur because of the nature of the breaches he’s previously committed and I’d taken him to court over” — John Jones, retired CASA investigator

When the various statutory authorities stalled recovering the plane from the sea bed, Samantha Hare and her family began to suspect, that the mystery of the cause of the crash would not be easily forthcoming.

It certainly would have helped to have recovered the aircraft as opposed to divers diving on it and trying to make assessments of possible reasons for it to have crashed — John Jones, retired CASA investigator

As Samantha Hare lived through the investigations, it became apparent to her that the regulatory system had failed at so many points to allow this catastrophe. She felt she had to tell the coroner and the court. It was the only thing she could do to honour Ian.

“I watched the coroner while Samantha was speaking and he was quite moved by the whole thing. He became quite emotional about it and I think that to see somebody who had been through what Samantha had been through and then to hear her was very valuable for both the coroner and Samantha and perhaps Samantha’s family as well” — Ken Fleming QC, family barrister

Now, as she awaits the coroner’s findings, Samantha Hare wonders if any of her recommendations to try to avoid a recurrence will ever be taken up.

Monday, June 24 at 8pm on ABC1.