Inquiries & Recommendations

Ngā ketuketutanga me ngā tūtohunga

An Airbus AS350 ‘squirrel’ helicopter was picking up passengers in Fiordland National Park. During final approach, the helicopter’s tail rotor reportedly contacted the ground. It landed hard with significant damage to its tail boom.

On 13 December 1994 at 1717 hours, Train 901, the southbound "Southerner" express passenger service between Christchurch and Invercargill, was travelling at 94 km/hr when the Locomotive Engineer noticed a buckle in the track ahead. He was unable to bring the train to a halt in the space available, and although the locomotive and three passenger carriages remained on the rails, all wheels of the trailing vehicle, a luggage van, were derailed.

The Captain M. J. Souza is a New Zealand-registered purse seine fishing vessel that was operating in the Pacific Ocean approximately 650 nautical miles north of Samoa. On 24 August the vessel was engaged in a routine fishing operation when a nylon rope sling that was securing one end of the fishing net to the vessel broke. The weight of the net was then transferred to an approximately 48-millimetre-diameter nylon rope called a safety choker line, which was designed to retain the net end in the event of the rope sling failing.

The helicopter suffered extensive damage and the pilot escaped with minor injuries during an emergency landing attempted after rotor power was lost during an agricultural spraying operation. Contaminated fuel was very likely the cause of the power loss; the operator’s refuelling procedures left opportunities for contamination to occur. TAIC made recommendations for more educational material to alert operators to contamination risks, and for the promotion of lessons learned from this accident.

[A preliminary investigation showed that the circumstances were not likely to have significant implications for transport safety. Consistent with section 13 of the TAIC Act the Commission discontinued the investigation and no report was published.]

On 2 November 2013 a British Aerospace Jetstream 32 aeroplane taking off from Auckland Airport started to veer left from the runway centreline. The captain was initially able to correct the heading change, but at about 90 knots the turn became uncontrollable. The aeroplane slowly ran off the left side of the runway before the captain could bring it to a stop. No-one was injured and there was no damage to the aeroplane or any airport infrastructure. The Transport Accident Investigation Commission (Commission) made the following findings:

This was a serious runway incursion incident that occurred when an aviation security officer drove a patrol vehicle onto the active runway at Dunedin International Airport at night in heavy rain ahead of a landing aeroplane. A collision was narrowly avoided because the vehicle driver kept to the shoulder of the runway and stopped soon after entering the runway.

On 11 May 2011 the nose landing gear of a Piper PA31-350 Navajo Chieftain (the aeroplane) jammed in a partially retracted position during a training flight at Nelson Aerodrome. The nose landing gear could not be extended again, and in the subsequent landing the aeroplane sustained substantial damage. Neither of the 2 pilots, the only persons on board, was injured.

At about 1924 hours on 5 January 2009, a recreational jet-boat and personal watercraft collided almost head-on at high speed close to willow trees near the bank of the Kawarau River, Queenstown. None of the 3 persons on the jet-boat was wearing a lifejacket2, so when the driver and front-seat passenger were ejected from the boat in the collision and probably rendered unconscious, they drowned. The third person received minor injuries.

[A preliminary investigation showed that the circumstances were not likely to have significant implications for transport safety. Consistent with section 13 of the TAIC Act the Commission discontinued the investigation and no report was published.]

On Friday 18 0ctober 2002, at about 0515, 2 wagons on the rear of southbound express freight Train 215 derailed while negotiating a turnout as the train departed from the Hamilton container transfer depot. The derailed wagons were detached and the train continued its journey south, but at about 0750, as it entered Te Kuiti, 3 further wagons derailed as they crossed the north-end turnout. On Tuesday 25 March 2003, at about 0145, 12 wagons on northbound express freight Train 934 derailed while crossing the south-end turnout at Sawyers Bay.