A pilot may have suffered a mental lapse or medical emergency before a crash in which he, his wife and two children died, an inquest has heard.
Tech company chief executive Philip Garvey, 56, his wife, Ann, 55, their daughter Emily, 23, and son Daniel, 20, died when their six-seat Piper Malibu Mirage came down in the south-west of England.
Somerset coroner’s court was told that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) carried out a thorough inquiry into the fatal accident and produced a detailed report.
The report concluded that the accident may have been caused by Garvey, who was flying the plane, trying to manually start a landing descent while the autopilot was still on.
But the court was also told that he had a serious medical condition and had been complaining of dizziness before the crash in November 2015.
The aircraft went into a sudden climb into cloud as it approached its destination, Dunkeswell aerodrome in east Devon.
Several witnesses told the AAIB that they heard a sound like a plane doing “aerobatics” before the aircraft reappeared and hit the ground near Churchinford in the Blackdown Hills near Taunton.
Somerset coroner Tony Williams read extracts from the report during the inquest in Taunton.
He told the court: “The evidence from the autopilot examination system suggested that, as the pilot turned on to the final approach and started to descend, the autopilot may not have been disengaged due to a mental lapse, incorrect button selection or a technical fault.
“The investigation was unable to determine with certainty the reason for the initial rapid climb. However, it was considered possible that the pilot had initiated the preceding descent by overriding the autopilot. This would have caused the autopilot to trim nose-up.”
While the aircraft would still have been controllable, the report said, recovery “may have been beyond his capabilities”.
The court heard that Garvey had been a pilot since 2012 and had bought the aircraft – his second – in the summer of 2013. The family were flying to Dunkeswell from Fairoaks airport in Surrey, close to their home in Woking. He had flown to Dunkeswell 25 times since September 2013.
While instructors found Garvey good at “doing things by numbers” they said he was “less able than average pilots at multitasking and poor at prioritising, especially when under pressure”, the AAIB report said.
Postmortem examinations concluded that the Garvey family had all died as a result of multiple injuries.
The court heard that pathologist Dr Russell Delaney had found that Garvey was suffering from severe coronary artery disease and had reported a recent bout of dizziness.
Recording separate conclusions of accidental death, Williams said: “I think I should record that despite the extensive and detailed investigation by the AAIB, they were unable to determine with certainty the cause of the accident.
“At best it was identified there was the possibility that Mr Garvey had initiated the incident by overriding the autopilot.
“We have the report from Dr Delaney who has identified severe coronary artery disease and a recent dizzy spell and cannot rule out a medical condition as causing or contributing as far as the incident is concerned. Sadly I am unable to give a definitive answer to precisely what happened.”
