The Rocky based Bell 407 'copter hits the water while attempting a night rescue of two
crew members of a yacht stuck on Queensland's Great Barrier Reef

The Archerfield based Rescue 500 helicopter is then called in to rescue the two crew members of the downed chopper and the yacht crew

On April 21, Kiwi Land's second largest airline, Qantas New Zealand, was placed in receivership and the entire aircraft fleet grounded all over the apparent non-payment of $700,000 in overdue landing fees at Wellington Airport

The parent company, Tasman Pacific Airlines formally Ansett New Zealand, operated a Qantas franchise allowing use of the famous name

A Cessna 185 floatplane has been shot down by the military over the Amazon jungle in Peru killing two U.S. missionaries on board

April 21:-
A Beech Bonanza, possibly an A36, with 2 persons on board is reported missing on a flight from Swan Hill to Goulburn in NSW

April 22:-
The downed A36 aircraft has been located just short of the Goulburn airport

Canberra vet Honey Nelson was enroute to Gympie on Anzac Day when she heard a loud bang about one and a half hours after departure and realized the propeller on her home-built Rutan Long EZ aircraft had fallen off

The aircraft was over water at the time so Honey made a beeline for the beach and carried out a successful minimum damage forced landing on an isolated stretch of beach in the Myall Lakes National Park

Dick Smith, former boss of CASA, mentioned on Adelaide radio 5AA that "...no airline has ever been fined, because the staff who prosecute are in the same union as those they have to act against"

"CASA is an organisation, basically it's run by a group of workers collectives - there's no real leadership"

The OZ Transport Safety Bureau released, on April 25, its report on the Qantas B747-400 runway overrun accident at Bangkok International Airport on 23 September 1999

The ATSB report also pointed out that Qantas management had failed to instruct its pilots on the correct use of reverse thrust after landing