The BBC has screened an interview with the family of Bradley Coker.

Bradley, a British tourist, died along with eight other people when a sky diving plane crashed over the Fox Glacier on the day of the Christchurch earthquake. His death was one of many in the adventure tourism sector in New Zealand, one that is perceived to be poorly regulated and with a high accident rate.

In a statement to the BBC, Prime Minister John Key said approximately 50 people had been killed in the adventure tourism sector in the last 8 years.

from the BBC interview with Bradley’s family:

“To anyone thinking about going to New Zealand on an adrenaline sport think twice, the report is a catalogue of errors from both the CAA and the sky diving company” … regulations “not enforced”… “two of the tandem masters had actually taken controlled drugs before they got on the plane” (cannabis)

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For more about New Zealand’s drug problem read this report in the NZ Herald NZ’s world-high drug use no surprise – Experts

BBC:

“The family of a British man who was killed when the aircraft taking him on skydiving trip crashed in New Zealand, has called for a review of aviation safety to stop a further tragedy happening again.

Bradley Coker, 24, died on South Island in 2010 while trying skydiving, along with eight other people. An accident investigation report found a catalogue of errors.

Bradley’s father Chris, sister Elizabeth, and his girlfriend Hayley Denham, want safety to be reinforced in so-called adrenaline sports”.

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Other countries who lost their nationals in the disaster have also reported on the crash, and on the official investigation into one of New Zealand’s worst air disasters.

The Fox Glacier crash was before the Carterton ballooning tragedy in which 11 people were engulfed in flames. The balloon pilot, Lance Hopping, was later found to have cannabis in his system at the time of his death. Remarkably, two of the jump masters in the skydiving crash were also found to have taken cannabis prior to the flight.

Adventure tourism must learn from NZ crash

The modified topdressing plane, carrying four foreign tourists, four tandem jumpers and a pilot, had too much weight in the rear of the plane when it tried to take off on September 4, 2010, causing it to rise very sharply and at too low a speed to be controllable.
NZ Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) investigator Ian McClelland says the plane flew regularly with eight passengers, producing too much weight in the rear of the plane, and the owners and pilot were not checking weight and balance as they should be.
But he also says regulation of adventure aviation was not what it should be, that the modifications to the plane were poorly managed, and discrepancies in the modification documents weren’t picked up by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) when it approved them.

“The CAA lost the opportunity to correct the company’s errors,” Mr McClelland said…” more here

 “I am German and have been in NZ for the past 4-5 years. I completely support this site and strongly confirm these allegatons. NZ has no control or standards and has minimum professionalism or competence…public transport, mobile phone service, administration, hospitals, immigration, you name it…I had it all. NZ is beautiful but things simply do not work. Be careful and and maintain some healthy common sense ’cause you cannot expect it vice versa.”