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A Perth man has been identified as the pilot who lost his life in a plane crash in the Wheatbelt on Wednesday.
Malcolm Vivian, 76, was flying just outside of Northam in a single-seat plane he had built himself when it crashed in Malabaine about 11am.
“Emergency services attended and located the pilot, the sole occupant of the aircraft, deceased at the scene,” a WA police spokesperson said.
Aerial vision of the crash showed the wreckage over cleared bushland off the Great Eastern Highway, with fire trucks, police and detectives at the scene.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said Vivian had been flying a replica of a Spitfire plane, which is a single-seat fighter aircraft that was used in World War II, with enthusiasts frequently working to build their own from scratch.
Vivian was an aviation enthusiast from Perth’s northern suburbs and was an active member of the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia.
He and the club had previously worked at a local high school and helped them build a fuselage for a plane. The club donated tools to the students who worked on the project.
Originally from the United Kingdom, Vivian was an electrical engineer by trade.
Friends said Vivian was an avid flyer, and accepted the risk when he took to the sky. Another said Vivian had been embarking on a test flight after finishing building the plane, and he had watched him leave the Northam hangar on Wednesday.
“He will be missed – what a loss of a great man with a love of aviation,” one said.
The ATSB said investigators will arrive on site on Thursday.
“The ATSB has deployed a team of transport safety investigators from its Canberra offices, specialising in aircraft maintenance and engineering, and materials analysis,” an ATSB spokesperson said.
Investigators have asked anyone with video footage of the accident flight, or its immediate aftermath, to contact them.
WA Premier Roger Cook said he would wait until the findings of the ATSB report before considering whether more regulation was needed for amateur-built planes.
“It’s a very sad, sad event. And our hearts go out to the families and friends involved in the death of this particular pilot,” he said.
“It would have been a confronting scene for emergency service workers as well.
“That incident will now be the subject of an examination … and that’s the appropriate response, making sure that we get the learnings from it.
“Now, in terms of whether you take these learnings and say that we need to have higher level of oversight or regulation in terms of these … ‘self-build plays’. I’ll leave that up to the experts.”
The preliminary report into the crash is set to take eight weeks.
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