Whakaari / White Island. Photo: GNS
Three commercial helicopter tour operators have pleaded guilty at the 11th hour, and will no longer go to trial over health and safety failings in the lead-up to the deadly Whakaari eruption in 2019.
Volcanic Air, Kahu and Aerius entered guilty pleas to amended charges in the Auckland District Court on Friday, and will likely be sentenced after the trial.
It takes the number of defendants to face a judge-alone trial next week down to six, but Judge Evangelos Thomas said WorkSafe would need time to adjust its case.
"With these three defendants pleading guilty on the last working day before the start of our trial that creates some very real difficulties for the parties that still remain in that trial to be ready for Monday," he said.
"The landscape for trial is now far different that it was yesterday or two days ago."
The trial will now begin a day later, on Tuesday, with a karakia on Monday to call the case.
It has been more than three years since the disaster in December 2019 which claimed 22 lives and left 25 seriously injured, many of whom were tourists from overseas.
Of the 22 people who died, one was a customer of Volcanic Air.
The three helicopter operators had licence agreements with the island's owners, through the company Whakaari Management, to land and provide guided walking tours on Whakaari.
WorkSafe laid the charges in November 2020, now amended, which do not relate to the eruption or the rescue and recovery efforts afterwards.
It found the companies failed to do risk assessments, inform tourists of the risks and provide protective gear - it said each company's gas masks were inadequate.
The summary of facts said that two companies, Volcanic Air (in liquidation) and Aerius, had inadequate emergency procedures as a result of their failure to assess the risk.
It said their plan for a volcanic eruption "consisted of tourists following the instructions of workers to find shelter either behind rocks, in the helicopter or in the shipping container, and then evacuating Whakaari by helicopter or boat if available".
WorkSafe found Kahu's emergency procedure was also inadequate, as it relied on pilots not being injured so they could conduct an evacuation.
The trial is set down for four months and is being held in one of Auckland's largest courtrooms to accommodate the sheer number of people involved, including legal teams and media.
The guilty pleas take the number of defendants down to six, including the island's owners, three members of the Buttle family.
Whakaari is among a few privately owned islands in New Zealand and has been in the Buttle family's hands since 1936.
The Buttle trio have been charged as individuals, relating to their roles as directors of Whakaari Management, which granted licences to tour operators to take tourists to the island.
The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 requires directors of a company to exercise due diligence that the company is meeting its health and safety obligations under the act.
Meanwhile their company, Whakaari Management, is among the six remaining organisations facing charges relating to failures to ensure the health and safety of workers and others.
Three other organisations have pleaded guilty - the flight operator Inflite, GNS Science and White Island Tours, while a charge against the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) was dismissed.
WorkSafe will open the trial and plans to play back defendant interviews in coming weeks.
Its chief executive, Phil Parkes, said it had been the most extensive and complex investigation ever undertaken by the regulator.