FIVEAA Afternoons with Stacey Lee - 23 June 2026

But first, the big news today that has, uh, been released, the ATSB is conducting its investigation into the plane crash, the light plane crash, which killed flight instructor Robert Hoyle and a student pilot at Parafield Airport, uh, back in April.

It has released an interim report and has identified, um, that a component in the nose landing gear failed due to fatigue and the nose landing gear remained extended during the flight.

So what does that mean? Angus Mitchell is the chief commissioner of the ATSB and joins you now.

Good afternoon, Angus.

Thanks for your time.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for having me.

Can you explain to us in layman's term what that means about the, the nose landing gear failing due to fatigue?

Yes, absolutely.

So look, this was the accident that many of your listeners will be aware of.

Only occurred two months ago, back on the twenty-ninth of April.

And tragically, as you pointed out, we, uh, we lost a pilot instructor, so the, the instructor on board the aircraft and the pilot undergoing, uh, instruction.

Now what's happened is very soon after takeoff, they were there conducting, um, a training flight and the plan was to conduct what's known as, um, single engine inoperative.

So that's the shutting down or the reducing power in one of the engines, um, simulated to simulate an engine failure.

Now that was the purpose of the flight.

Now quite tragically, very soon after takeoff, they've started to yaw left, and that's really veering left and they've continued all the way around, um, and impacted a building.

Now tragically, the two of them have lost their lives and a number of people on the ground were also taken to hospital with injuries.

What we've found and why we've released this report today, uh, so early in the investigation is we found a component in the landing gear.

That's what's known as a, um, actuator rod.

Uh, that component has fractured due to a, a fatigue fracture.

Now that has had the potential very much, and we know this from past experiences, to impact the rudder controls.

So a rudder control going hard left is what we've found is, uh, has occurred in this instance, has most likely been due to the fracture of this piece.

Um, so that's part of the puzzle and it's very...

I guess it's, uh, quite important that we release that today because there's around six hundred of these aircraft in, uh, in service around the world.

So that tells us part of what's occurred.