January 2 2006
Four Parachutists and a pilot were killed when the turbocharged Brisbane Skydiving Centre 7-seat C206-350 they were in failed to climb after take-off from the Willobank Drop Zone near Ipswich plunging into a neighbouring property's stock watering dam after the right wing struck a tree
 
The drop-zone operator/owner Brian Scoffell was on board the downed machine and escaped from the submerged wreck along with his female tandem skydive student - both are in hospital undergoing surgery for injuries sustained in the accident

 
From images captured by the News Desk and eye-witness reports recorded in the media - it would appear that there was some type of engine malfunction (over-rich mixture) possibly due to a fuel injector/controller diaphragm failure that went undetected by the 22 year-old CPL pilot during take-off and/or mandatory engine checks prior to take-off
 
The aircraft had a modified engine - a turbocharged Lycoming 540 of 350hp that gave the machine a substantially improved climb performance over the original normally-aspirated Continental 520 of 285hp

January 1 2006
OZ aircraft owners have been asked by the authorities to re-register their aircraft under a new amendment - called Part 47 of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998
 
The finalisation cut-off date was originally November 15 2005 - after that date any aircraft that had not complied with the new registration process would be left "unregistered"
 

 
The News Desk has established that of the 12561 machines on the register as of January 1 only 4633 aircraft owners had succeeded in submitting their new registration data to CASA's satisfaction



Now that makes only 7928 aircraft left to go - any aircraft not finalised by mid February '06 - the new extended cut-off time - will become unregistered therefore rendering it as not flyable