Just curious to hear from those currently in the UK what the perception is over there of the 2 incidents this week with regards to the Fox Glacier plane crash and the Hot air balloon crash, and the marijuana that was found to be in the system of 2 of the deceased.

Will it really have an impact on "adventure tourism" ... it sounds like one parent of a deceased english tourist is really trying to make himself heard.

Not in the UK, but I am extremely concerned that any pilot that is responsible for other peoples safety, and ultimately lives, touches drugs at all. Personally I'd like to see strict drug testing regimes for all commercial pilots. Most manufacturing/mining/transport companies will have mandatory testing, there is no reason why it shouldn't be done for pilots, even independent, self employed ones.

I get drug tested driving a digger so these fellas should definatly be getting done

I second that.

Agree with you they should be randomly tested if it is done for the bakers at Pak n Save, then why not for someone intrusted with other peoples lives.
Kaz

Not really headline news in the UK. Had to dig for this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/new_zealand

interesting really as NewstalkZB implied it was all over the british press.!!.... I was just interested to hear if it had made it to any significant news level in blighty.

Caught a 'snippet' of an interview with the family of the poor guy that was killed, it was on BBC Breakfast TV a few days ago.....main issue was lack of Health & Safety Regulation in extreme sports in NZ. Not seen anything on evening News prog's tho' and don't buy news papers......

Agree with this, although operating an excavator can be pretty high-risk as well mate.

Got to say though the hash-smoking over here is rife and there was an occasion when using temp agencies that only 2 out of 17 passed their drug test, and thats baring in mind that there is a threshold and you don't need to score zero to pass.

That's scarry But is that really true

It was on the BBC morning news as someone had said, I watched the whole interview, the father was obvoiusly distraught & made out that NZ was a bad place to visit, the sister kept said how its a 'commenwealth country' and the rules should be better.
I dont think it was good for tourism but
I didnt see any other news about it to be honest though.

I've seen the same clip that's already been mentioned, with the father and sister of one of the deceased, saying that it wasn't so much the regulations that were at fault, but that checking that the regulations are being adhered to was the real problem.
I hold a pilot's licence myself, and have flown in the UK and NZ, and the regulations seem very similar to me.
IMHO, I don't think it'll have any bearing at all on NZ tourism though. . .

Talking with a mate back home and he mentioned it. Seems to be a more a case of an upset parent grieving for his son who is making criticism of adventure tourism as being the cause for his son's death.

What's sad in this case is that there was a series of events which allowed this tragedy to occur and taking the 'root cause' analysis of this event it looks like several people have either been neglectful or worse, deliberately evasive of safety and construction regulations, the result of which brought about the deaths of these young people.

The fact that two people, supposed responsible people, had dope in their blood stream is almost inconsequential.

However, the case with the ballon flight tragedy may well be another matter

Think back to when you lived in Britain. Did anything from NZ ever make the news?

It might have made some morning news programmes to fill out space/time but to most people, NZ is just some place near Australia with even less significance.

completely agree.

when I was last in UK I was chatting to a taxi driver who thought NZ was connected to Oz via a "channel tunnel" ...