“WE’RE going to crash.”
These were the last words Janis Johnson screamed out to her husband before the Sunflower Airlines Riley Heron aircraft plummeted to the ground, killing 11 out of its 14 passengers and crew on Saturday, December 27, 1986.
In a report to United Press International, Ms Johnson — who was 38 at the time — recalled the final moments before the crash, one of the worst aviation disasters in the country, in which she lost her husband Kenneth Vondrasek, 48.
“We were coming to a landing and it was very rough. The last thing I remember is telling my husband ‘we’re going to crash’.
“We were very close to the ground and we weren’t on the runway yet and the plane was very unstable.
“That’s the last thing I remember. I woke up in the hospital.”
Not much is known about what has happened.
Ms Johnson was one of three survivors of one of Fiji’s worst aviation disasters.
There were 14 people on board the ill-fated aircraft when it lifted off from Savusavu.
About 1.48pm, as the Heron aircraft approached Nadi International Airport, it banked sharply to the right before plummeting to the ground about 200 metres short of the runway.
Of the 11 people who perished, four were Fijian nationals, six were Americans and one was a Swedish tourist.
The survivors were Fiji national Vinita Swamy, 2, and American nationals Janis Johnson, 38, and Candice Dame, 29.
The flight crew, pilot Jonn Doni and co-pilot Andrea Drew, unfortunately lost their lives.
The list of victims included Lawrence Dame, 62, of Deerfield Circle Beach, Florida, his wife Roberta Dame, 61, and their daughter Sandra Dame.
Also killed in the crash were Kenneth Vondrasek, 48, of Valdez, Alaska, and Thomas Byrnes, 35, of New York City.
Ms Johnson told United Press International that the first leg of the flight from Savusavu had been hampered by strong wind.
She said the winds were “fairly calm” when the Heron aircraft made its approach to Nadi International Airport.
She recalled the aircraft becoming “very unstable” before it banked sharply to the right and crashed to the ground.
Among the locals who died in the crash were Sunita Swamy, 26, of Lautoka and her five-month-old daughter Simita.
Miraculously, her elder daughter Vinita, who was two-years-old when the plane went down, survived the crash.
Despite the aircraft cartwheeling and ending up upside down, Vinita suffered a broken shinbone and other injuries.
Vinita would be 33 years old today.
According to reports received by this newspaper, she lives in Sydney, Australia, now.
It was reported that Sunita Swamy was a dietitian at the Lautoka Hospital and she was returning from visiting her sister when she met her death on the Sunflower Airlines flight.
Her husband, Venkat Swamy, was a radiologist also at the Lautoka Hospital.
It was only when he was called to work in the afternoon of December 27 to attend to three survivors of a plane crash that he discovered that his wife and five-month-old daughter had died in the Sunflower Airlines crash.
Another survivor, American national Candice Dame, 29, had initially been admitted at the Nadi Hospital immediately after the crash.
A South Florida news agency in the United States, the Sun Sentinel reported on January 9, 1987, about two weeks after the Sunflower Airlines crash, she finally returned home.
And perhaps the cruellest twist to her tale was the fact that she had departed Delray Beach in South Florida along with her parents and sister for a two-week holiday in Fiji.
Little did she know that she would be returning on her own after the four-engine Riley Heron crashed into a sugarcane and pawpaw plantation just short of its destination.
Ms Dame and her family were on a Christmas vacation which had been organised by John Jones, her stepbrother, who was a yacht captain who sailed the South Pacific at the time and were returning home when the crash happened.
The Sun Sentinel reported that Ms Dame had been admitted at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, California on Wednesday, January 28, after a direct flight from Nadi to Los Angeles.
When reporters tried to speak to her at the time, her uncle Bill Dame said the 29-year-old was “too exhausted to talk”.
Candice Dame survived the crash with a fractured pelvis, broken right arm and head injuries.
According to her uncle, some of the injuries were more serious than first suspected.
He told Sun Sentinel reporters that “her legs are in much worse shape than we thought”.
“There were some open lacerations. We’re just trying to let the poor kid rest and recover for a while,” he had said at the time.
Matt Dame, Candice’s brother, said doctors were confident that his sister would fully recover from her injuries.
Attempts made by The Fiji Times to contact Ms Dame via email have been unsuccessful.
There has been a lot of discussion on aviators forums about the cause of the crash.
Of particular concern was the fact that the Nadi tragedy had been the second fatal air crash in Fiji in 1986.
In September, a woman died when a Heron aircraft operated by Fiji Air crashed at Vanuabalavu in the Lau Islands.
Aviation Safety Network, which is part of the Flight Safety Foundation, reported that at 500 feet on approach to Nadi, “the right flap jammed at 35° while the left one continued to 60°.
“The aircraft rolled to 90° bank, struck the ground and cartwheeled short of runway 21.”
It listed the probable cause as an “unsecured non-standard flap attachment pin migrated upward and lodged in a lightening hole.”
The Fiji Times is attempting to obtain the full report of the crash from the Department of Civil Aviation.
