Post by Dave Homewood on Dec 10, 2006 22:22:45 GMT 12
The pilot infamous for threatening to fly into the Sky Tower has given his first interview. He seems a sad character and you really have to feel sorry for him I think.
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3887011a11,00.html
Down on the farm - Sky Tower pilot talks
03 December 2006
Pilot David Turnock was so devastated at his marriage break-up that he threatened to fly into Auckland's Sky Tower on election night last year. In his first interview, he talks to Nicola Boyes about depression, lost love and being behind bars.
The videos on former pilot David Turnock's office shelf are predictable: Top Gun and An Officer and a Gentleman - dashing aviators who won the girl.
He has seen them dozens of times and, at 34, Turnock is New Zealand's own aviation celebrity of sorts. He lost his girl and nearly his life on national television on election night last year.
September 17 was not significant, he says, it just happened to be the day he stole a plane from Ardmore Airport, threatened to fly into Auckland's Sky Tower and finally ditched into the sea off St Heliers.
His wife Anna had left him, he had lost his job in Fiji, and severe episodic depression was bringing him down in a Piper Cherokee Warrior at a ground speed of 300km/h.
It landed him in court on a raft of aviation charges and then in prison.
Turnock has completed nine months of a 27-month sentence and, as a condition of his parole, he is milking cows.
He got up at 4.30 this morning and hated every minute of it.
Election night was his third attempt at taking his own life - his depression consumed him 24/7, he says.
It was Manukau District Court calling the previous day to say Anna had taken out a protection order which tipped him that time.
"I'm astonished that I survived."
He closed his eyes at 20 feet and opened them when he thought it was over.
AdvertisementAdvertisement"Once I realised I had survived it, I thought and I actually said it out loud: 'I'll be f----- if I'm drowning."'
He says he never intended to endanger anyone and would not have flown directly at the Sky Tower.
Sitting on a couch lent by friends in a farm house owned by more friends who have employed him, he says he used to be depressed. Now he knows he's just not happy.
"Prison's where you go to get drugs. It's incredible, I've never had drugs in my life. I had the opportunity to experience every type if I'd have wanted."
He has seen former All Black John Kirwan's story of depression and hopes his own may have some merit, although each day is still a battle. And he plans to write a book about prison.
The inmates called him "Sky Tower" and once they worked out he was not a terrorist he was a novelty. They asked him to fly drug runs for them when he was released.
"Prison's where you go to get drugs. It's incredible, I've never had drugs in my life. I had the opportunity to experience every type if I'd have wanted."
But it was not the right place for a man suffering depression.
"I acknowledge I broke the rules but perhaps there were other ways of dealing with it."
The woman he fell in love with seven years ago this Tuesday clipped his wings when she left him. They met at the Tauranga flight school and were married only a few months when they took up new jobs together in Fiji at Advanced Aviation. When Anna left to come back to New Zealand for time out, he lost his job.
"With no home, no job, no wife, it all started sliding apart."
His first attempt to take his life was after Anna confirmed an affair and took off her wedding ring. Anna and her father found him. The second came five days later in a hangar on the North Shore while talking to Anna on the phone. Police tracked his cellphone and saved him.
Both times he was admitted to hospital then put in mental health units.
"I thought I would get some help. Someone would want to know what was going on in my life."
Instead he was given pills.
"The type of counselling I'm getting at the moment, back then would have gone a long way."
Anna, whom he still calls "my wife", lives with an Air NZ pilot in Brisbane.
Civil Aviation has stripped Turnock of his pilot's licence, so he is limited to watching planes flying over the farm daily from an airstrip behind it.
Ironically, he learnt to fly here, at the Walsh Memorial Scout Flying School, where he later instructed.
"This very farm, this house, I know all these buildings intimately from above because I'd be saying to my students: `Over that house there, with that roof, you put this stage flap down."'
www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3887011a11,00.html
Down on the farm - Sky Tower pilot talks
03 December 2006
Pilot David Turnock was so devastated at his marriage break-up that he threatened to fly into Auckland's Sky Tower on election night last year. In his first interview, he talks to Nicola Boyes about depression, lost love and being behind bars.
The videos on former pilot David Turnock's office shelf are predictable: Top Gun and An Officer and a Gentleman - dashing aviators who won the girl.
He has seen them dozens of times and, at 34, Turnock is New Zealand's own aviation celebrity of sorts. He lost his girl and nearly his life on national television on election night last year.
September 17 was not significant, he says, it just happened to be the day he stole a plane from Ardmore Airport, threatened to fly into Auckland's Sky Tower and finally ditched into the sea off St Heliers.
His wife Anna had left him, he had lost his job in Fiji, and severe episodic depression was bringing him down in a Piper Cherokee Warrior at a ground speed of 300km/h.
It landed him in court on a raft of aviation charges and then in prison.
Turnock has completed nine months of a 27-month sentence and, as a condition of his parole, he is milking cows.
He got up at 4.30 this morning and hated every minute of it.
Election night was his third attempt at taking his own life - his depression consumed him 24/7, he says.
It was Manukau District Court calling the previous day to say Anna had taken out a protection order which tipped him that time.
"I'm astonished that I survived."
He closed his eyes at 20 feet and opened them when he thought it was over.
AdvertisementAdvertisement"Once I realised I had survived it, I thought and I actually said it out loud: 'I'll be f----- if I'm drowning."'
He says he never intended to endanger anyone and would not have flown directly at the Sky Tower.
Sitting on a couch lent by friends in a farm house owned by more friends who have employed him, he says he used to be depressed. Now he knows he's just not happy.
"Prison's where you go to get drugs. It's incredible, I've never had drugs in my life. I had the opportunity to experience every type if I'd have wanted."
He has seen former All Black John Kirwan's story of depression and hopes his own may have some merit, although each day is still a battle. And he plans to write a book about prison.
The inmates called him "Sky Tower" and once they worked out he was not a terrorist he was a novelty. They asked him to fly drug runs for them when he was released.
"Prison's where you go to get drugs. It's incredible, I've never had drugs in my life. I had the opportunity to experience every type if I'd have wanted."
But it was not the right place for a man suffering depression.
"I acknowledge I broke the rules but perhaps there were other ways of dealing with it."
The woman he fell in love with seven years ago this Tuesday clipped his wings when she left him. They met at the Tauranga flight school and were married only a few months when they took up new jobs together in Fiji at Advanced Aviation. When Anna left to come back to New Zealand for time out, he lost his job.
"With no home, no job, no wife, it all started sliding apart."
His first attempt to take his life was after Anna confirmed an affair and took off her wedding ring. Anna and her father found him. The second came five days later in a hangar on the North Shore while talking to Anna on the phone. Police tracked his cellphone and saved him.
Both times he was admitted to hospital then put in mental health units.
"I thought I would get some help. Someone would want to know what was going on in my life."
Instead he was given pills.
"The type of counselling I'm getting at the moment, back then would have gone a long way."
Anna, whom he still calls "my wife", lives with an Air NZ pilot in Brisbane.
Civil Aviation has stripped Turnock of his pilot's licence, so he is limited to watching planes flying over the farm daily from an airstrip behind it.
Ironically, he learnt to fly here, at the Walsh Memorial Scout Flying School, where he later instructed.
"This very farm, this house, I know all these buildings intimately from above because I'd be saying to my students: `Over that house there, with that roof, you put this stage flap down."'
