Hopes of sealing a deal in the skies went awry for an aircraft salesman who crash-landed a light plane during a test flight with the prospective buyer.
As the Cirrus SR22 aircraft spiralled out of control, the salesman said "I'm sorry" to his two passengers and later admitted to crash investigators he had been over-confident.
The buyer, a registered pilot, was concerned about some control issues with the aircraft.
Things went wrong as the salesman tried to allay his fears.
After telling his passengers to "watch this" the salesman rolled the aircraft into a left turn, with plans to stall.
But he lost control and the plane went into a spin.
Uncertain of being able to regain control, the salesman deployed the aircraft's auxiliary parachutes.
The plane was over high voltage powerlines near Katoomba, west of Sydney, with no way to manoeuvre around the hazard.
After narrowly missing the powerlines, the aircraft hit tree branches before coming to rest on a house fence.
There were no injuries, but in its investigation report released this week the Australian Transport Safety Bureau noted the salesman was observed by his passengers to be dazed and had to be shaken and told to hurry up and exit the aircraft.
In a statement provided after the May 10 crash, the salesman told the ATSB "he was probably overconfident as he had done the demonstration 30-50 times in the previous six months".
After taking off from Bankstown Airport the salesman said he diverted from his usual flying area because of smoke from back-burning fires and as a result was over an escarpment, reducing his "safety height".
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