S Africa opens inquest into Cronje's fatal crash

CAPE TOWN, Aug 7 (Reuters) South Africa's High Court opened an inquest today to investigate the 2002 plane crash that killed disgraced former South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje.

Cronje, who was 32 when he died, was widely viewed as one of the country's greatest cricket captains before his career ended in shame when he admitted to accepting around 130,000 dollars from bookmakers to influence the course of matches.

Two pilots -- Willem Meyer, 69, and Ian Noakes, 49 -- died along with Cronje when their small cargo plane smashed into mountains just north of tourist town George, about 400 km (250 miles) east of Cape Town, in the early hours of June 1, 2002.

An official accident report blamed the cause on bad weather, human error and faulty ground and aircraft equipment.

Air safety officials say it is not unusual to hold an inquest into an aircraft accident in South Africa, and that high-profile cases are sometimes put before the courts.

''The pilots did not expect they were over that area, they thought they were over the sea,'' Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) investigator Andre de Kock, told Cape Town's High Court.

''What was unknown to them was that they were drifting by a large amount. They had lost situational awareness,'' he said on the first day of the two-day inquest.

Cronje was banned from professional cricket in 2000 and his admission to match-fixing sent shock waves through the cricketing world, leading to bans for other South African and international stars.

Once adored by a sports-mad country, he was vilified in the media until his untimely death.

De Kock told the inquiry the pilots did not follow the correct flight pattern after aborting a first landing attempt in strong wind and low cloud.

The George Airport runway's ground landing system was not working correctly, although other beacons were functioning, and the ''directional gyroscope'' on the plane was defective, he said.

An inspection found that two wires on the compass were disconnected, a fault that could have resulted in the pilots receiving confusing direction readings.

The pilots may also not have initially believed the warnings that the plane was too near the ground before it crashed into the mountain peak on an attempted loop back to the airport.

REUTERS AY RK2241