Durban - If asked to name our greatest fear, many would cite being in a plane crash. The members of the Huber family are no different.
Yet 10 years ago, on Sunday, August 21, the unthinkable happened. The light aircraft carrying the Austrian passengers to Durban from a luxury Maputo holiday resort, crashed into a Durban North home just short of Virginia Airport.
Miraculously, Gerhard Huber, the managing director of major Austrian helicopter company Wucher, his wife, Monika, sister-in-law Alexandra and teen children Adam and Felicitas, survived.
And on Friday, the family returned to 32 Danville Avenue, for the party to end all parties as they toasted their “rebirth” with the house’s owner, Alwyn Field, and a crowd of friends, each of whom had been a stranger until the accident.
Raising his glass in a toast to the men and women who rescued them, provided physical and emotional support after the accident and, ultimately, have become firm friends, Huber said: “We were helped by a host of angels; and you are among those angels. Each year at 1.30pm on August 21, we pause and give thanks for our rebirth. For a second chance at life.”
The Huber family – tall, good-looking and outgoing – said that while their worst nightmare was realised when the plane plummeted to the ground on that ill-fated day, the aftermath had shown them the true mettle of South Africans.
“We might never have known how warm and incredibly open-hearted people can be if we hadn’t been through that nightmare. Our family expanded on that day to include many very special new members,” Gerhard said.
After the sun and fun of an annual holiday enjoying KwaZulu-Natal’s beauty spots, including the five-star Thonga Beach Lodge in Maputo, the Hubers boarded a twin-engine Britten-Norman Islander charter plane, piloted by Alistair Freeman.
With his extensive knowledge of airline safety procedures, Gerhard had enquired of Sky Africa, the charter company, working with the Lanseria-based owner of the plane whether their pilot was experienced, and been reassured that Freeman had “close to 1 000 hours” of flying experience. What they failed to mention was that Freeman had just six hours’ experience flying that type of plane.
On the approach to Virginia Airport, after two hours of uneventful flying, Gerhard noticed something was amiss. He pointed out to Freeman that the left-hand engine had died.
“He said he would turn the plane, and the air controller was shouting that he had deviated from course,” Gerhard said.
Alexandra takes up the tale: “The two words you never want to hear from the person piloting your plane are ‘Oh s**t!’ But that’s what Freeman said, and then we went down.”
The plane dropped like a stone, crashing through the roof of Field’s home, which happened to be the only unoccupied house in the street on that particular Sunday afternoon. It crashed nose first into the living room, with the nose embedding itself metres into the ground.
Through a veil of blood from a head wound, Monika screamed out the names of her children, sister and husband. Still conscious, although hidden from sight in a hole in the ground and trapped in his mangled seat next to the pilot, Gerhard reassured his wife, and the others called out that they were also alive.
Within moments two young neighbours, Gordon Wright and Wayne Campbell, had vaulted the wall of the house and were helping to guide Adam, Felicitas, Monika and Alexandra to safety.
Rescue personnel arrived within minutes and began cutting Gerhard and Freeman from the wreckage. The men were transported to uMhlanga Hospital suffering from multiple fractures – Gerhard with a crushed hip that would require multiple steel pins and a long period of recuperation.
But against the odds, they were all alive.
Milestone
Field (subsequently nicknamed “Airfield” by friends), said he had no doubt it was the solid construction of his 1958-built home that allowed the Hubers to survive their ordeal.
“I was at the bowling club and when the first person phoned to say a plane was in my lounge, I thought they were having me on,” he said.
“When I got to my road, it was cordoned off and I had a job persuading the cops to let me through. The plane’s right wing was lying on the huge wooden beam that runs across my lounge, and the second wing was sticking through the smashed patio door next to the pool.
“They really built strong roof trusses in the ’50s, and they helped break the plane’s momentum as it hit the house. The sandy soil probably also helped.”
As they recovered from their ordeal, and while they waited for Gerhard to be given the all-clear to fly home, the Hubers were inundated with offers of help, hospital visits and thoughtful gifts from local people.
“We had one sad moment in South Africa, but we have had hundreds of happy ones,” said a beaming Gerhard.
“It was an unbelievable story with a very happy ending. We want, as we celebrate this milestone, to thank all those who reached out to us. The emergency workers, the Field family, Rick and Michelle Wilson, the staff at uMhlanga Hospital, and all the others who have kept in touch and visit us in Austria, and whom we visit when we come here to our second home. Our many, many guardian angels.”
Plane ran out of fuel, aviation authority finds
After the crash the Civil Aviation Authority conducted an investigation into its cause.
“Their report said (pilot Alistair) Freeman had little experience and the fuel gauges on the plane were faulty. It appears we had run out of fuel,” said Gerhard Huber, who had chartered the ill-fated Britten-Norman Islander plane.
“Freeman took inappropriate action because he did not have enough knowledge of how to deal with that plane in an emergency. I was lucky I had taken out comprehensive medical insurance for my family, so the huge hospitalisation bills were covered.
“I later heard that the company that owned the plane had shut down. We were not too surprised to hear what became of Freeman.”
Although law dictates that a pilot must list any accidents he has been involved in on his CV, Freeman was subsequently hired by SA Airlink in 2008. On September 24 2009, he crashed an SA Airlink Jetstream 4 100 on the playing fields at Merebank Secondary School. Freeman died of his injuries.
Airlink chief executive Rodger Foster said after the incident, during which Freeman and co-pilot Sonja Bierman were critically injured and flight stewardess Rodelle Oosthuizen sustained serious injuries, that Freeman’s previous plane crash was “irrelevant”.
Before the authority’s report was released, Foster said he wasn’t aware of the Durban North crash but “it is irrelevant from our perspective. We don’t judge him or select him on the basis of his past history”.
When the report into the second crash was released two years later, it concluded that pilot error was the “probable cause”.
Freeman had shut down the wrong engine when one of the Jetstream’s engines malfunctioned.
Sunday Tribune