London - A light aircraft crash which killed four members of the same family may have been caused when the father piloting the plane pressed the wrong button, an investigation found.
Businessman Phil Garvey, 56, died with wife Ann, 55, daughter Emily, 23, and son Daniel, 20, when his six-seat aircraft crashed in poor weather.
The family from Woking, Surrey, were flying to visit another daughter, Laura Francis, and her two-year-old daughter Katie when the plane came down on approach to Dunkeswell airfield in Devon.
Air accident investigators found that the Piper Malibu Mirage went into a sudden climb into dense cloud before plunging into a field.
Witnesses told the Air Accidents Investigation Branch that they heard a sound like a plane doing ‘aerobatics’ before it hit the ground in November last year.
A report on Thursday revealed that Garvey may have pressed the wrong button or suffered a mental lapse as he prepared to land. Investigators said it was possible he descended without realising the autopilot was engaged, causing the plane to pitch up to correct itself.
The report said: ‘The evidence from the autopilot examination system suggested that, as the pilot turned on to the final approach and started to descend, the autopilot may not have been disengaged due to a mental lapse, incorrect button selection or a technical fault.
‘The investigation was unable to determine with certainty the reason for the initial rapid climb.
‘However, it was considered possible that the pilot had initiated the preceding descent by over-riding the autopilot. This would have caused the autopilot to trim nose-up, increasing the force against the pilot’s manual input. Such an out-of-trim condition, combined with entry into cloud, could have contributed to an unintentional and disorientating pitch-up manoeuvre.’
The report added that if Garvey tried to descend with the autopilot on, it would fight him as it attempted to maintain its set height, causing it to go nose up.
While the aircraft would still have been controllable, the report said, recovery ‘may have been beyond his capabilities’.
Garvey, a director of a software company, had been a pilot since 2012 and had bought the aircraft – his second – in the summer of 2013. He had flown the route from Surrey to Somerset 14 times.
The report said instructors reported that he had been good at ‘doing things by numbers’ but ‘less able than average pilots at multi-tasking and poor at prioritising, especially when under pressure’.
undefinedFrancis, 31, said: ‘We are all utterly heartbroken. They were the best family anybody could have wished for and they brought happiness to everyone they met.’
Emily and Daniel were described as ‘extremely well liked and respected by their peers’ at St John the Baptist School in Woking, where they were students between 2004 and 2013. Emily recently graduated from the University of Nottingham, while Daniel was studying English at Birmingham University.
Daily Mail