Sydney seaplane was half a mile off course before fatal crash

A seaplane pilot who crashed near Sydney on New Year’s Eve was more than half a mile off the authorised route when the plane turned sharply right and nosedived into a river, killing him and his five British passengers.

Canadian-born Gareth Morgan was flying the group - Richard Cousins, chief executive of British catering giant Compass Group, his two sons, his fiance Emma Bowden and her daughter - back to the city from a waterside restaurant when the DHC-2 Beaver aircraft went down.

The plan was “dramatically” off course when it plunged, in “a near vertical position”, into Jerusalem Bay, on the Hawkesbury River, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Nat Nagy, executive director of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, says a key part of the investigation will be determining why the pilot made the fatal turn. Nagy told reporter that the cause of the accident may never be known, says Reuters.

There is no evidence of a bird strike or collision, and small aircraft do not need to have a voice or flight data recorder on board, the BBC reports.

According to ABC News, the boss of Sydney Seaplanes, the operator of the crashed aircraft, said that “the plane simply should not have been where it was”.

The pilot was experienced and had flown the authorised route “hundreds of times before”, said chief executive Aaron Shaw. “A turn of this nature at low altitude by a pilot with Gareth’s skills, experience and intimate knowledge of the location is totally inexplicable.”