Ron Chippindale Killed

Well-known and highly respected New Zealand aviation figure, Ron Chippindale was killed in a road crash in Wellington on 12 February.

Mr Chippindale, who was a pedestrian at the time, was killed by teenaged driver who lost control of the early model V8 Ford Falcon he was driving.

Ron Chippindale was born in England but lived most of his life in New Zealand and was educated at Rangiora High school. He joined the RNZAF as a pilot in 1951 and he served until 1974, retiring as a squadron leader.

That year he joined the office of Air Accidents Investigation. A year later, he became the chief inspector of air accidents and subsequently, in 1990, the chief investigator of accidents for the Transport Accident Investigation Commission.

During his time as an accident investigator, he was the investigator-in-charge of 48 air and rail accidents and oversaw approximately 400 accident investigations.

Undoubtedly, the most well known of the incidents he investigated was the Air New Zealand DC10 crash on Mt Erebus in Antarctica in 1979. Mr Chippindale attributed the crash to “pilot error” but this finding was disputed and a subsequent royal commission into the crash cleared the flight crew of any wrongdoing. However, the commission’s investigation, which broke new ground and changed the way the entire world considered crash investigation thereafter, was not critical of Mr Chippindale’s conduct or actions in his investigation and he was widely acknowledged as a hard-working and dedicated professional with an eye for detail.

M Chippindale’s services and expertise as an accident investigator were recognised internationally and he often travelled overseas to assist with investigations. Notable among those he assisted with were the shooting down of a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 by the Russians in 1983 and the contentious crash of the Mozambican presidential Tu-134 in South Africa in 1986.

Mr Chippindale retired in 1998 but remained involved in aviation safety and taught aviation safety as an adjunct lecturer for Massey University School of Aviation.