Pilot killed himself out of guilt over Cork air crash

Oliver Lee, 29, left the Manx2 airline just days before one of its planes crash-landed at Cork in dense fog last February, killing four passengers, the pilot and co-pilot.

An inquest heard today that Mr Lee, who had flown twice a day between Belfast and Cork while working for Manx2, wondering if the accident could have been averted had he been piloting the plane.

Mr Lee left the airline to join another operator, Jet2.

At today’s hearing his friend and colleague of five years, Duncan Hastie, said he had gone to the farm where Mr Lee lived with his family in the village of East Morton, Keighley, after he failed to meet him to go to a barbecue.

He told Bradford Coroner’s Court he had to go to the local pub to find somebody to help cut the “big lad” down after he and Mr Lee’s sister had found him hanging by a rope in a stable.

He said: “Before the crash he was a confident pilot, with good judgement. When he worked at Manx2 he coped with things well.

“Shortly after he left there was the incident in Cork and that worried him. He was about to start training at passenger flight company Jet2 and his confidence was knocked, his perception of his ability was tarnished. He worried he wasn’t going to pass.

“He said he wouldn’t have let the crash happen. He felt had he been there, he would have not done the flight.”

A retired homeopath and friend of the family, Joyce Orbisher, said Mr Lee had confided that he was “rattled” by the incident.

He had spoken to her as his family were concerned about the way he was feeling.

She said: “He said his confidence had dropped and that before he was always very careful - you needed to concentrate 300 per cent and it was even good to be a little bit on edge - but he wasn’t the same since the crash.

“Flying freight and passengers was different to flying 300 people on an aeroplane.”

Despite achieving 100 per cent in all written tests so far, Oliver feared he would not pass an up-and-coming flight simulator test.

He was supposed to be revising for the test with Mr Hastie before the tragedy.

Returning a verdict of suicide, coroner Prof Paul Marks said: “Oliver was a skilled and diligent pilot and was undergoing further training to further his career.

“It is impossible to speculate why he was thinking the way he was. Perhaps his diligence and attention to detail could have avoided the tragedy occurring.”

Speaking after the case, his father, company director Dave Lee, 55, said: “It’s a great shock. The loss for myself, his sister Harriet and his partner, Katie Long, and all his family and colleagues, of a wonderful person, pilot and thoroughly decent man, to us all seems unnecessary.

“Before this life was just fantastic. He had everything to live for, he had a great career and a partner he was talking to about marriage and life together.

“He wanted to be a pilot from being a kid, his mum, who died of cancer six years ago, worked in aviation and he was really into planes.

“He became more fascinated after we were in a plane crash in 1985 at Leeds Bradford airport when the plane went off the end of the runway.”

The pilot at Cork Jordi Lopez, a friend of Mr lee, had to abort two landings and on a third attempt the right wing tip of the aircraft clipped the runway.

The plane overturned, skidded 200 yards and caught fire. Six people survived.