The Melbourne courtroom is over 15,000km away from the crash site, but that hasn’t stopped the families of those who died in a skydiving tragedy in Sweden from taking legal action against the plane’s Australian manufacturer.
On July 14, 2019, eight skydivers were preparing to jump from an Airvan at 13,600 feet when the plane entered an aerodynamic stall, followed by a roll and a sudden change in direction to its left. “The fact that no one was able to get out and save themselves using their parachute was probably due to the g-forces and the rotations that occurred,” the report said.The report said that the pilot had limited experience of both normal flight and parachute operations. There were no technical faults discovered in the plane that could have contributed to the crash.
The families allege that the defendants did not include critical information in an operating manual supplied with the aircraft at the time of purchase and failed to ensure it was suitable for parachuting operations. The companies being sued had sought to have the legal action dismissed, arguing that the Supreme Court of Victoria was the wrong location to hold the case given the crash occurred in Sweden.
Despite the potential complexity of conducting a trial in Victoria with the plaintiffs based in Sweden, the Supreme Court ruled in May that the case would proceed.Credit: