Indian girl student die in New South Wales plane crash

A teenager killed in a plane crash in New South Wales yesterday had been “hyped up” about learning to fly before taking the controls of the doomed aircraft.
Witnesses said Chandrika Gaur, 18, had jumped excitedly on board the plane with her instructor, who had only just graduated as a flight trainer.
Both women were killed when their light plane crashed into a house after a mid-air collision with another plane in Sydney’s west.
Trainer pilot Joanne Ethell studied at Cessnock-based Hunter Valley Aviation in NSW, from where she graduated earlier this year before joining its sister company Basair Aviation just three months ago.
At the controls of the plane was Ms Gaur, a young Indian national, who had only been in Australia for about four months.
The daughter of an Indian doctor had enjoyed a coffee at the Flyers Cafe at Bankstown Airport before embarking on her lesson.
Cafe owner Eddy Omeissah last night told The Daily Telegraph Ms Gaur was excited about flying after finally securing a training time.
“She was a lovely girl,” Mr Omeissah said.
“She came here hyped-up to do some flying”.
Ms Ethell’s Lismore-based parents were last night too devastated to speak about the loss of their daughter, who was well-known for her love of flying.
Relatives from Queensland were en route to Lismore to comfort them.
19/12/08 The Australian, Australia

Report of the crash from The Age, Australia

Two female pilots were killed when their light plane slammed into the back of a Sydney house after a mid-air collision with a second training-flight plane.
The Basair Aviation College instructor and her student, believed to be aged 21 and 18, were in a Cessna 152 flying over Casula, in Sydney’s south-west, when the collision occurred about 11.30am yesterday.
The second plane, a single-engine Liberty carrying an 89-year-old instructor and his 25-year-old male student, immediately sent a mayday before flying 10 kilometres to Bankstown Airport.
Police said it was “a miracle” the Liberty was able to make a safe emergency landing at the airport, where the elderly Sydney Flight Training Centre instructor and his student walked away with minor injuries.
Witnesses described seeing the planes hit. The tail was torn off the Cessna, which then hurtled to the ground, demolishing the rear patio of a newly completed house on Flame Tree Street, Casula.
“I just saw the other (plane) out of nowhere and I thought, ‘Geez, they’re close,’ and he’s just run straight into the back of it,” a witness, who was among the first on the scene, told Macquarie Radio.
“The back tail section0 has, like, flung around and was still hanging on, but was disconnected, and it’s just nosedived, just straight down into the houses. It was horrific, it was like watching a movie.”
The man, who had been lopping trees nearby, checked for pulses on the two women but said it was obvious they had not survived.
Bianca and Steven Condina were not home when the plane hit their house. The new mother had chosen that morning for her two-week-old son Aiden’s first photo with Santa.
Distraught Basair staff and students were being counselled after the deaths of their colleagues.
Friends took flowers to the airport and the crash site.