A Seventh-day Adventist mission pilot died in a plane crash near Goroka in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea May 3.
Les Anderson, 58, director of the church’s Adventist Aviation Services, was flying the new Fletcher 54 P2-SDG solo from Karamui on a routine freight flight. The plane crashed 30 kilometers south of Goroka at 3:25 pm. The cause is unknown.
The Civil Aviation Authority reported the plane missing that evening. A team in a helicopter and a team from Adventist Aviation Services searched the area until dark. Teams in two helicopters and two planes searched again the next morning.
“We found the wreckage within half an hour of the first helicopter leaving,” said Glynn Lock, the chief pilot for the church in the South Pacific.
Lock had been visiting Goroka for an annual assessment of Adventist Aviation Services. He described the news of Anderson’s death as “shattering.”
Peter Brewin, associate secretary of the church in the South Pacific, called Anderson “a real man of God” who showed “absolute commitment to furthering the mission of the church through aviation.”
Anderson, a longtime resident of Canada, was a United States citizen who had worked for the church in Canada and Ethiopia, and had served as director of Aviation Services in Papua New Guinea since 1998. “Les earned the respect of those living in the Eastern Highlands,” said Denis Tame, associate secretary for the church in Papua New Guinea. “He was a missionary in the truest sense of the word.”
A support team from the church’s head office in Wahroonga, New South Wales, arrived from Australia following the crash. “They will stay as long as they are needed,” reports Tame.
Bill Norton, a pilot from the United States whom Anderson had been training as his successor, will become the new director of Adventist Aviation Services. Brian Scarbrough, also from the United States, and Jock Mackay, a volunteer from Townsville, Queensland, continue to work as pilots.
Anderson will be buried May 8 in the cemetery on the campus of Kabiufa Adventist Secondary School. He is survived by his wife, Mary Lane, and their children, Loy and Glen. The couple was to return to North America on June 10.