Sir - My son, Thomas Kowald, was killed on 21 May, 1995, off the coast of Portugal. He wanted to take a Cessna 310Q on a ferry flight from Florida to Austria, and had a fatal accident off the Portuguese coast.
I wish to highlight the large number of fatal accidents in the course of such flights, in the hope of saving other peoples' lives. Only a year after my son's accident, Clark Woodward, who was an experienced ferry pilot with more than 300 Atlantic crossings, had a fatal accident off the Azores.
As such flights are carried out with only one pilot on board there is no chance of surviving a ditching.
I suggest, therefore, that:
- two pilots, with emergency equipment (such as parachute, dinghy, electronic locator transmitter and food) must be on board. Most importantly, there should be a security mechanism at the door latch, so that the door can be opened while the aircraft is in flight;
- pilots who land, overtired after perhaps 9-10h of flying should be prohibited from taking off again.
Restrictive measures such as these could save lives and I ask for such provisions to be made.
Josef Kowald
Perchtoldsdorf, Austria
Source: Flight International