NSW: Instructor dreamt of flying since she was a young girl
By becoming a pilot Ms Ethell had followed her father and her recently deceased grandfather, Dr Guy Ethell, into the cockpit.19 Dec 2008 2:28 PM
SYDNEY, Dec 19 AAP - A young flight instructor who died when her plane crashed after a mid-air collision over Sydney had dreamt of flying since she was in primary school.
Joanne Ethell, 20, hoped to eventually work for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, her uncle says.
Ms Ethell and her 18-year-old student Chandrika Gaur died when their Cessna 152 was involved in a mid-air collision and crashed into the back of a house at Casula, in Sydney's southwest, on Thursday.
The 89-year-old flight instructor in the second plane, former World War II pilot Ken Andrews, and his student managed to fly their single-engine Liberty 10km back to Bankstown airport and landed safely.
Ms Ethell's uncle Brett Ethell said her Lismore-based parents Kay and Gryff were devastated.
They would travel to Sydney soon to collect their daughter's body, he said.
The young pilot was an instructor for flight training school Basair, based at Bankstown Airport, and had only graduated from the company's Cessnock-based academy this year.
She had moved to Sydney with the goal of returning to Cessnock and her boyfriend Dan Rodgers, a Basair instructor at the Hunter Valley academy, Mr Ethell said.
Her ultimate dream was to become a pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, he said.
"Her mother told me this morning that when she went through her old books that she found a year six schoolbook (in which) she had written in the back that she wanted to be a pilot," Mr Ethell told AAP.
"Her ultimate goal was to fly for the Royal Flying Doctor Service - she didn't want to fly 747s, she wanted to fly for the Royal Flying Doctor Service."
While her father was a recreational pilot, Dr Ethell had learnt to fly to keep up his rural medical practice in Queensland's southeast.
"They (Joanne and her father) both loved flying - I guess they got it from Joanne's grandfather," Mr Ethell said.
"He was a flying doctor, for want of a better word, a flying physician.
"His practice was in southeast Queensland, in the country, and it covered so many square kilometres so he thought he would fly a plane to get round to see his patients."
Ms Ethell was the adventurous type who also loved snowboarding, water skiing and deep-sea fishing, her uncle said.
"Her father was rapt that she could fly a plane before she could drive a car, he thought that was a big deal," he said.
"I noticed that when we were at her grandfather's funeral about a month ago, she'd gone from a young girl to become a young woman who was completely happy with life.
"She'd achieved a lifelong dream to fly, and to die this way is tragic."
Mr Ethell said the family wanted to know how the tragedy happened.
"Everyone would like to know why, but I think as far as Kay and Gryff go, they're just happy for the civil aviation authority to do their investigation and whatever happens there happens," he said.
