Did the country's aviation regulator do enough to prevent one of this country's worst helicopter crashes from happening, and have changes been made to stop one happening again?
High resolution image of the wreckage of a helicopter on the Fox Glacier in 2015. Photo: Supplied / Transport Accident Investigation Commission
These are some of the key questions the Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA) head of safety will face on Tuesday at an inquest in Christchurch in to a 2015 crash that claimed seven lives on top of Fox Glacier.
The Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) found the pilot Mitchell Gameren was inexperienced and had not been properly trained.
Despite having already pleaded guilty in 2019 to failing to keep his employee safe, on Monday the owner of the helicopter charter business, James Scott, denied he had not done enough to equip his pilot with the skills needed to fly in changeable conditions.
"Your pilot at the end of the day, you can't take all those responsibilities away from him. It just can't be black and white, there's got to be some judgment there to let him make a decision that, yes, I can land, or no, I can't, and the only way you actually learn that is by the experience of being up there and doing it."
The squirrel helicopter crashed after taking off again from the top of the glacier.
Scott said the decision to land in what were changeable conditions was not due to any pressure from him but may have come about following a request from the paying customers.
"Mitch was a very obliging person so, you know, if he had the pressure put on him, 'look we'd like to really land', you know that could have influenced him, it's only a could have or a maybe, but it is a question we pilots all get."
Scott expressed frustration at the CAA and its characterisation of the pilot who trained Mitchell Gameren as inexperienced.
"The CAA tried to say in their statements here that he wasn't experienced, that the instructor wasn't experienced, with about 30 years and probably 20,000 flying hours, you know this is what we have to put up with in this industry."
In its damning report, TAIC found the training manager Chris Green had not been on site in four years.
But the man in charge of conducting safety audits of Scott's operation, Barry Waterland, said attempts to fix this situation by replacing Green with Scott, were frustrated by the CAA.
In this way he said the CAA contributed to the problems that led to the crash.
"It took us a year after the accident to try and get this done. CAA themselves completely blocked, blocked, blocked what we were trying to get approved."
Waterland, whose business was found to have breached health and safety regulations, also said the CAA was wrong to point to a lack of training for the person responsible for weighing the passengers, to ensure the helicopter was not overloaded.
"According to CAA the loader was not trained correctly, but in fact the loader had training the day before."
Soon after the crash, the CAA admitted that it only had two inspectors monitoring operators and that its oversight should have been better.
Looking ahead to CAA deputy chief executive for safety David Harrison appearing at the inquest on Tuesday morning, Coroner Marcus Elliott had this question for the authority's lawyer.
"I'm just interested to know from Civil Aviation Authority's point of view, what is there in terms of training and assistance to assist operators in educating pilots about these sorts of situations which we're addressing?"
The answer to this question will be eagerly awaited by the families of the seven victims, many of whom are watching the inquest via a video link.
The inquest is scheduled to last all week.
