~First Air Crash Accident~

Nineteenth-century balloonist David Mahoney (alias Captain Charles Lorraine) was the first New Zealander to die in an air accident, drowning after his balloon came down in the sea beyond the entrance to Lyttelton Harbour in 1899. Balloons gave way to aeroplanes before the First World War, and the pioneering phase of aviation stretched into the 1930s. The first aircraft fatality occurred in 1919 when a biplane crashed during an aerobatic display over a race meeting at Christchurch, killing pilot Cecil Hill. Such accidents brought home the hazardous nature of flying.