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As previously mentioned, after some discussion with Paul Legg and the eyewitness and using  common denominators from both of their accounts we have been able to work out where their ground track was on the flight out of Milford, to Queenstown. Paul Legg’s account was that he had just announced to his passengers that the weather was not good enough to get through to Queenstown due to the cloud being down on the mountain tops and so had turned back up towards Lake Alabaster intending to return to Franz Josef, their original departure point. Not long after making that decision, he noticed a gap in the cloud on top of the ranges in the direction of Queenstown and so flew through - a decision he would normally never do. I’ve been in the same situation where you make an instant decision to go for the gap and latter think, “What a stupid thing to do. What would have happened if the hole had closed up when we were part-way through?”

I guess it’s all part of gaining experience..... if you live long enough!

The yellow line shown above is the approximate ground track on their flight out. Paul Legg remembered the account as it being the witness’ wife that saw it and she was in the left rear seat, whereas she told me that it was actually her husband that saw it (and he admitted that was correct), and he was in the co-pilots seat on the right side. Paul marked his map believing the possible aeroplane seen was on the left-hand side of their track where she would have seen it, whereas in reality it would have been on the right-hand side.

You’ll note on their track that they flew up the Chair Creek Valley.

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