Crash Hearing Told Of Threat To Co-owner
Illawarra Mercury
Saturday July 29, 2000
A former Whyalla Airlines chief pilot threatened to get even with the airline's co-owner, a tribunal was told yesterday.
The airline wants the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to overturn a grounding put in place by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, after a Whyalla Airlines plane crashed off the South Australian coast on May 31 this year.
All eight people aboard the plane died.
The airlines' lawyer, Gary Hevey, told the tribunal that former chief pilot David Usher had been threatening and abusive towards airline co-owner Kym Brougham in a phone conversation after losing his job in April.
Mr Hevey alleged Mr Usher used the phrase - ``I will get even with you," as well as making other similar comments.
But Mr Usher said all he had told Mr Brougham was that he was an ``arsehole".
``I rang up Kym and said `you're an arsehole' and hung up, that's literally all that was said."
© 2000 Illawarra Mercury
