October 21, 1998 AD
The Theodul Glacier Crash
A sightseeing helicopter carrying Greg and Pip Lahey, four German tourists and an experienced Swiss pilot crashed near the Theodul Glacier above Zermatt in deteriorating weather. Swiss rescue teams reached the wreckage within hours. There were no survivors. Pip's last postcard to her children had been posted from Zermatt that morning.
Gregory Thomas Lahey and Philippa Rose Lahey were killed when the sightseeing helicopter carrying them crashed near the Theodul Glacier, above Zermatt in the Swiss Alps, at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon local time. They were three days into their long-planned journey through Europe. The scenic flight over the Matterhorn had been Pip's particular wish, and the couple had booked it before leaving Tasmania.
The morning in Zermatt had been clear. Pip wrote a postcard to the children over breakfast, describing the mountain view from their hotel room and promising stories about glaciers, and posted it on the way to the heliport. By early afternoon cloud was building over the high passes. Conditions were marginal but within the operator's limits when the helicopter lifted off with seven people aboard: the pilot, Urs Brunner, who had flown the route several hundred times; the Laheys; and two German couples on holiday, Klaus and Renate Hoffmann of Stuttgart and Dieter and Ingrid Weiss of Freiburg.
The flight lasted less than twenty minutes. Over the glacier, a mechanical failure in the tail rotor drive left the pilot without directional control at the moment the weather was closing in around him. He attempted to put the aircraft down on the ice and did not have the visibility or the control to do it. The helicopter struck the glacier near its upper edge and broke apart.
Air rescue crews from Zermatt reached the site within hours, working in failing light and fresh snow. All seven people aboard had been killed on impact. The recovery of the bodies continued into the night and resumed at first light. The Australian Embassy in Bern was notified that evening, once the passenger list had been confirmed with the operator, and began the process of contacting the families in Tasmania.
In Tasmania it was already late at night. Oscar and Sarah Lahey were asleep at their grandparents' house in New Norfolk, and nobody there yet knew anything had happened.
Rumours that the couple's journey had some connection to confidential government research began circulating in Tasmania within days of the crash. No one in either family was able to account for where they came from.
