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The Aviation Industry Association (AIA) is calling for a review of New Zealand's pilot training operations, following yesterday's fatal air crash near Feilding.
Flight instructor, Jessica Neeson, and a female student were killed in a mid-air collision between two Cessna 152s.
The latest air crash comes just two weeks after another plane crash left an instructor and a student seriously injured.
In that incident, flight instructor Gary Skedgwell and trainee pilot Sam Metzger miraculously survived their plane crash in the Ruahine Ranges. Both men were left seriously injured.
The AIA's Irene King said the industry had an issue that it must address.
"We cannot have these levels of accidents and occurrences, week on week, because then that has significant reputational damage."
The AIA's annual conference this week had been overshadowed by yesterday's crash and it is now calling for a full review of pilot training operations.
"We have to look at whether there are any systemic and underlying failures occurring in the industry that we can address so we can engineer these accidents out of our business," King said.
However New Zealand's air safety regulator claimed Kiwi flying schools are among the safest in the world.
"We have licensed, rated, and regularly checked instructors. We have a good modern regulatory environment and we have a good environment for flying in New Zealand," said Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesperson Steven Douglas.
Yesterday was not the first time students had been killed in aviation accidents. In 2006, Massey students, Brandon Gedge and Dae Jin Hwang, died when their Cherokees collided near Palmerston North.
And approximately two years ago, two trainees and an instructor were killed in a collision between a Cessna and a helicopter near Paraparaumu.
These accidents all prompted safety warnings. But the auditor-general released a damning report last month which showed industry concerns raised five years ago were not acted upon by the CAA.
The government said a review now was too premature as it needed to await the outcomes of these most recent incidents.
Those investigations are expected to take some months.
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