A pilot has died and his passenger seriously injured when the Robinson R44 helicopter they were in crashed in unknown circumstances in West OZ




The accident happened at Mingah Springs Station about 240km north of Meekatharra around 1100hrs on Saturday - the chopper pilot was 37-year-old Matthew Charles Wilson who was working for a South Australian survey company and his male passenger was a 23-year-old Irish backpacker

The pilot of an unidentified ultralight aircraft (possibility an OZ designed Lightwing) that crashed into water off Sydney's North Coast has lost his life after carrying out an emergency landing into shallow water off Curl Curl beach




One person has survived and was winched to safety by a rescue helicopter

Pilot was 60-year-old Gary Malane from Bonnet Bay in NSW - the Lightwing ultralight was en route from Ballina to Wedderburn airport south-west of Sydney

The passenger who survived was a 32-year-old male - the 2-seat low-wing was returning after a service at Ballina where it was manufactured

The USA"s Federal Aviation Administration advisory committee on pilot training has found that "automation addiction" has eroded flying skills of airline pilots to the point that they sometimes don't know how to recover from stalls and other irregular in-flight situations




The International Air Transport Association has found that 51 "loss of control" accidents occurred when aircraft stalled or pilots were unable to recover from an unusual attitudes - "airline pilots are forgetting how to fly"