Plane Down

Viewing the top story on the evening news just seconds before you’re about to be a major part of it is a surreal and unbelievable experience, and one that I hope I never have to repeat.

Twenty years ago, on a night that still feels as if it were yesterday, this was my reality. On the evening of August 19, 1998 my siblings and I, minus my twin brother who lived in Australia at the time, had gathered at my younger brother’s house in Christchurch, New Zealand for dinner. As a quartet of twins (two sets) we were a close family in both age and affection but we rarely found the time together like this on a week night.

As I recall, the TV was on in the background but no one was taking any notice of it until my brother received a phone call from our mother. The color drained from his face and he held the phone against his chest, his aghast silence grabbing our attention with far greater impact than words ever could. We stared at him as he gestured at the television and uttered a phrase I had never expected to hear. “Dad’s plane has gone down in the sea.”

My father was an IQP (Independently Qualified Person) who's job entailed checking the safety of police buildings throughout New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. A thorough and meticulous man, he took his job seriously and he enjoyed the tripping around that was a key component of the role. We knew he’d left Christchurch the day prior to travel to the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand on business, with a quick journey by plane across to Stewart Island included in his itinerary.

Shushing our unaware children while we stared with morbid fascination at the solemn-faced news reporter on the TV screen, we discovered that a Cessna aircraft had ditched into the expanse of sea between Bluff and Stewart Island. Foveaux Strait, a notoriously freezing and inhospitable stretch of water and the last strait between New Zealand and Antarctica. Fleeting camera shots were shown, giving us glimpses of the white-skinned plane beneath the waves, of grim-faced rescue workers wearing knitted beanies and thick gloves, and most ominous of all, paramedics loading a body in a black bag into the back of an ambulance.

“There are survivors,” I said brightly, determined to remain positive for both my sake and my siblings’ sake. “They just said they’ve found survivors. Did you hear them say that? Dad will be one of the survivors. He’ll bore us with this story at family dinners for years to come.”

We drove across town to Mum’s house, three separate and fast moving cars in a solemn procession of disbelief. I think I knew the news was bad when we saw the police car parked outside but there was no way I was letting go of hope. Not yet. We crowded around the police officer while Mum sobbed in an armchair but the policeman could tell us nothing. His face was wretched with compassion. “I don’t know. I don't know anything. They’re still identifying the victims and the survivors.”

Victims. I have always detested that word. To me, it signifies that a person has no choice in a matter. I did not want my father to be a victim. I did not want to be a victim.

We waited, we watched the news, and we spoke to my twin in Australia as he raced to the airport to catch a flight home. My three young children, wide-eyed and watchful, ate their dinner in silence while they waited for the adults to tell them what they should do. The police officer hovered uncomfortably in the background as we stared at the TV for any mention of updates. I phoned a police officer friend and asked him to call in a favor from colleagues at Bluff, hoping he could circumvent the system and provide us with the information we needed but he had nothing tell us that we didn’t already know.

Finally, the officer took a phone call in the other room and returned with the news we didn’t want to hear.

“How do you know it’s him?” I shrieked, shoving my face mere inches away from his, close enough to see the sympathy in his eyes that I refused to acknowledge. “Someone must have it wrong. It’s misidentification.”

The police officer, looking as if he wished he were anywhere but here, struggled to keep his voice steady. “They found his phone and his wallet. I’m sorry.”

The next few hours are somewhat of a blur. As the oldest, I was charged with phoning family and friends to ruin their evening. Questions flew at me and around me but I stoically carried on, aware there were many more phone calls still to make.

My twin arrived from Australia and along with my younger brother, he caught another plane to Invercargill, the nearest airport to Bluff, to identify Dad’s body and bring him back. I felt detached, as if this was happening to someone else rather than me. A dream within a dream.

I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was the image of a plane falling out of the sky. The why and how were still a major part of the whole scenario; Dad had made that same 20 minute journey a number of times without incident. Planes did not fall out of the sky when the trip was little more than a giant’s footstep between two somber bodies of land.

The press arrived at the front door the next morning, sending Mum into a fury. I guess people always need someone to blame and she turned her anger on the reporters who were seeking details of the man behind the name in the news. They were only doing their job. No, you can’t have a photo of my husband to share with your readers, get off my property!!

Mum repeated over and over that Dad had always called the small Cessna a ‘flying coffin’, as her living room filled with too-fragrant flowers and weeping mourners knocked constantly at her door. I went out to buy more coffee, sugar, milk, and toilet paper as a seemingly never-ending stream of friends and family appeared, all needing refreshments and all wanting to use the bathroom.

Disbelieving people needing a hug that I didn't want to give, the heady, nose-twitching scent of too many flowers, and the sound of weeping are my strongest memories of those first few days.

I refused to visit the funeral home to view Dad’s body, a refusal that I don’t think my mother has ever forgiven me for. However, I preferred to remember him as he was in life and I had no wish to see him in a coffin, dead and gone forever. I also put my foot down about the funeral service and strangely enough, no one disagreed with me. I asked that his coffin not be present during the service, arguing that everyone knew he was dead. Why did they need the coffin there as proof? Perhaps this was a sign that I was trying to avoid the inevitable, but the coffin did not make an appearance at the service.

People overflowed out the doors and into the parking lot during the service but I wasn’t aware of that until I was told afterwards. My family sat in the front row and I listened as people stood up and said nice things about Dad, while half of me expected him to run chuckling up the aisle crying, “Surprise! I fooled you all!”

The experts charged with investigating the accident gradually came up with a summary of facts. The pilot, for reasons unknown as he too died in the crash, had not refueled before flying back across Foveaux Strait. The plane had simply fallen from the sky because it ran out of fuel. All passengers had survived the crash into the sea, scrambling out of the exit doors to perch on the half-submerged aircraft. However, a lack of lifejackets meant that not all passengers were able to find one.

I can relate what we now know happened after the crash, but it is difficult for me to imagine my Dad in the middle of such horror. To put it bluntly, the passengers wearing lifejackets survived and the others died of hypothermia in the freezing waters. A small boy, despite wearing a lifejacket, slipped out of the adult-size floatation vest and his body was never recovered. A fatal mistake in relaying the coordinates of the downed aircraft sent rescue ships in the wrong direction, prolonging the time it took to reach the passengers. The delay came with a deadly cost and five people never made it back to shore alive.

A year later, I traveled with my mother down to the tiny coastal settlement of Riverton, located about an hour from Bluff. The coastguard from Riverton reached the aircraft and collected the survivors and bodies on that fateful day, bringing all passengers except the little boy home to their families. The family of the little boy lost had donated a new rescue boat and the commemoration service included an offer for relatives of the victims to visit the site of the crash. I’m very glad I went, although some friends told me they thought it was a morbid expedition and that I shouldn’t go.

I guess that up until that point, I was still mad at my father for not holding on for a just a short while longer, for not striking out to swim to shore and save himself. For not coming back. The coastguard’s boat chugged through the murky, greenish water and the icy wind froze our fingers and noses as he steered us toward the site recorded in the accident report coordinates. I gazed around and tried to recreate how frightened and alone the passengers must have felt out here in the waves. Stewart Island appeared distant from this point but the mainland was terrifyingly close. Close enough to swim to, if fear and frigid temperatures didn’t freeze a person’s ability to move, and if the sea didn’t meet the land in a long shoreline of sheer, impassable cliffs. I finally understood that swimming to safety was an impossibility.

The coastguard switched off the engine and we stayed where we were for some time, each lost in our own thoughts. It was peaceful, with the boat bobbing gently and the sun glancing off the cliffs. Seabird called their lonely cries in the sky above as Mum dropped a wreath of flowers onto the waves where her husband had once tread water and hoped for rescue. I didn’t feel sad – instead I felt I’d reached some kind of resolution. I had dealt with my father’s death and now I could move on.

I have the coroner’s report combined with the Civil Aviation Authority’s report tucked away somewhere. It’s a thick bundle of wordy material that seeks to collate technical facts rather than emotions and I’ve never quite found the courage to read it, probably because I doubt that I can detach myself enough from the situation to read it with unbiased interest.

It also took me many years before I visited the monument the officials placed on the top of the cliffs at Bluff, the same cliffs that I’d gazed at from the coastguard’s boat. When I did find the time for my solitary pilgrimage, I found the experience almost as surreal as when I first saw the footage of the accident on TV. Standing alone at that isolated point, with the cold wind tugging at my hair and Stewart Island looming far off in the distance, it was bizarre to look down at a plaque embedded in the rock and read my father’s name.

I stood there quietly for several minutes and was surprised when a woman with hiking boots and a backpack suddenly appeared beside me. She said hello, commented on the cold wind, and nodded at the plaque. “Terrible thing to have happened.”

“Yes. One of the victims was my father.” I'd finally admitted it. The woman hurriedly retreated as the wind carried my words away to imprint them forever on the cold Bluff cliffs.

The End