Imperative to file a flight plan or flight note - Huges 300 crash

I have recently been contacted by the father of one of the young men who lost his life in the Hughes 300 crash. The helicopter went missing on a flight between Moorabbin and Albury in late September.

From the latest information, it looks as if the flight was undertaken without any form of flight notification being filed. When the aircraft was finally found it was so badly destroyed that even if the aircraft had been fitted with one of the latest 406 MHz satellite beacons it would probably have been destroyed on impact.

The father is quite devastated but still complimented AUSSAR. He said, “Dick, I rang them to say I really appreciated the fact that they had got a result and the tremendous amount of work they did to find the accident site.”

I believe that this will probably be one of the most expensive searches of recent times, no doubt costing millions of dollars.

There are now calls for compulsory flight planning to be re-introduced and I can understand this reaction. My advice is to never fly away from a built up area unless someone clearly knows where you are planning to go.

In this particular case, even if the two young men had filed a flight plan, say Moorabbin to Albury direct, there is always a situation where a pilot could divert due to weather and be out of VHF range so an amendment cannot be given to Flightwatch. Possibly this is what happened in this case as the aircraft was found away from the direct and most logical route between the two places.

On a recent camping trip with my wife, Pip, to Lake Eyre and Cooper Creek, I took a Global Star satellite phone and gave all of my flight notes and regular updates (via the phone) to my office in Sydney during the week, and to my daughter during the weekend. This cost less than $1.50 per call and would have meant that I should have been located very easily in the event that I had gone missing.