A father who claimed a $900,000 death benefit has been denied a payout after the complaints authority found drug use probably played a role in his pilot son’s plane crash.

The claimant was in line to receive the benefit after his son died in the crash in October 2017. There was a capital benefit balance of $800,000 and a death benefit of $100,000.  

But the trustee, Austair Pilots, denied the payout because blood samples showed the pilot tested positive for methylamphetamine and amphetamine, which it argued contributed to the loss.  

Its policy had exclusions for events occurring “as a result of self-intoxication or the effect of drug use”; a person’s deliberate exposure to exceptional danger; or any criminal act.  

In its ruling, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority notes the trustee’s fund rules, which took effect in May 2017, contained cross-referencing errors that suggested such exclusions would not be applicable. However, it says the cross-referencing issue did not apply to paying the death benefit.  

Austair Pilots relied on an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report that found there was “abnormal operation of the aircraft” and considered issues of pilot impairment or incapacitation.  

The report did not make a definitive finding on the role methamphetamine played in the crash but did not discount that it could have impaired the pilot’s ability.  

A trustee-appointed forensic pathologist said there were “indications that the deceased’s behaviour as a pilot may have been affected by methylamphetamine use.

“Given the known effects of high levels of methylamphetamine in an operator of complex machinery, including an aircraft, and the levels of the drug identified in this case, more likely than not the deceased was significantly affected by the intoxicating effects of methylamphetamine and as such would be exposing himself to exceptional danger by flying an aircraft.”

The father relied on an associate professor’s report that said it was impossible to determine the concentration of methylamphetamine in a liver sample that had been subject to “significant trauma, decomposition, incineration, shrinkage and charring”.

AFCA accepts there was “conflicting evidence” about whether the crash was “as a result of” the man’s drug use, noting only the trustee’s pathologist definitively came to this conclusion. 

However, it says exclusions regarding the commission of a criminal act did apply.  

It says civil aviation regulations do not allow operating pilots to “be in a state in which ... having consumed, used or absorbed any alcoholic liquor, drug, pharmaceutical or medicinal preparation of other substance ... capacity to act is impaired”.

“Given that it is an offence for a person to operate an aircraft under the influence of drugs, I am satisfied the trustee reasonably determined that flying an aircraft after consuming illicit drugs did amount to deliberate exposure to exceptional danger, especially given the legislative prohibitions in place,” the authority’s ombudsman said.  

“I think it is also fair to say, on the balance of probabilities, that the plane crash occurred at least in part because of this exposure.”

See the ruling here.