Adventurous skydivers embraced life on their final day

On a cool winter afternoon, two thrill-seekers held hands and jumped into a small plane to head off on their latest adventure.

The fun and light-hearted moment between parachutist Alex “Alby” Welling and instructor Stephen Hoare turned out to be touching, belying the horror ahead.

When the men were next seen at Goulburn Airport in southern NSW on June 27, 2021, they were dangling wildly upside down under the Cessna 182, their equipment caught on a metal step.

Hoare, a 37-year-old tandem master who jumped more than 2,300 times, and adrenaline junkie Welling, 32, died in a rare skydiving accident known as a “snag.”

The airport’s owner, John Ferrara, and his company, Goulburn Flight Training Center, were fined a total of $250,000 on Friday for workplace safety violations that led to the men’s deaths.

A lengthy and highly technical trial revealed a series of moments that sealed the man’s fate, including the unauthorized installation of the ladder, lax safety procedures and a dangerous attempt to rescue them in the air.

Flying at an altitude of 12,000 feet, it was an ominous boom that first alerted pilot Jim Czerwinski to Hoare and Welling’s unsuccessful takeoff.

Czerwinski looked toward the open door and saw a confused Welling staring at him, but the men were unable to speak over the loud howl of the wind.

Czerwinski, who was initially “quite apprehensive”, told the court he lowered the plane to 8,000 feet, where it would be warmer for the stranded paratroopers.

After reporting the emergency to the authorities, he took the hook knife in the cabin and tried to free the men with one hand.

Czerwinski then took both hands off the controls and threw his legs out the door to reach the stranded couple, but the plane turned violently 90 degrees to the right.

The immense force sent Czerwinski through the plane, dropping the knife as he tried desperately to keep it from crashing.

When he returned to his seat, he contacted ground personnel and told them to use a car on the runway while he flew low and slow above.

He told the crew to catch the men as he sped down the runway; Judge Andrew Scotting later found the rescue attempt had intensified what was already an “extremely dangerous” situation.

On the ground, Welling’s close friend Nick Amoroso was unaware of the chaos in the sky as he stood on a viewing platform near the track.

Amoroso, Welling and another friend had booked an “Adrenalin Skydive” at the flight center for a day of fun and freedom as long-standing COVID-19 restrictions eased.

Amoroso, “petrified” by the heights, would watch Welling dive and then join him in the air for his first jump that afternoon.

The tattooed and quietly spoken mechanic was brittle with emotion in court as he recalled watching another parachutist, Theo Miras, land.

He said he was quickly taken to the airport by Miras, who went up with others to film their jump with a GoPro camera.

Shaken, Heritage told Amoroso that the men were “locked up.” Legacy was the first to jump in and there was nothing he could do to help.

“When you heard the ‘hung up’ sound… I thought they were stuck in a tree,” Amoroso told the NSW District Court in Sydney in September 2025.

Amoroso said he watched as the Cessna came into view, airport personnel driving the four-wheel-drive vehicle along the runway, flying very low.

“I noticed that Alby and Steve were hanging upside down, clinging to the plane,” Mr. Amoroso told the judge, his voice heavy with prolonged shock.

“The plane was trying to get low enough and there was a man in the four-wheel drive vehicle trying to catch Steve and Alby.

“This has failed several times.”

Welling and Hoare broke free at about 100 meters when the rescue attempt failed and Czerwinski returned to a higher altitude.

Hoare released his spare parachute, but it did not open in time and the men fell to the ground.

When paramedics arrived there were no signs of life.

It was Czerwinski who designed and installed the step, with the approval of his boss, John Ferrara.

The step, made from a folded piece of sheet metal and placed in a U-shaped bracket, would help the paratroopers take off.

But its haphazard design created a dangerous S-curve that would make it nearly impossible for the men to extricate themselves.

“This step constituted an obvious and dangerous obstruction,” Judge Scotting said.

The judge found that Ferrara knew that installing the step required expert approval and an engineering order for the Cessna to fly.

There was various evidence of conversations between Ferrara, his son, and Czerwinski about who was responsible for receiving the order.

But Ferrara was a boss who worked at the airport seven days a week, doing everything from dumping trash to making administrative decisions, and could ground the plane until the move was approved.

“It would require little effort to remove the keys to secure the Cessna and prevent its use,” Judge Scotting said.

The court also found that the company did not conduct “friendly checks” on the paratroopers’ equipment before each flight; this was a simple precaution that could have detected a loose belt in Welling’s equipment.

What happened that afternoon shook even the most seasoned professionals.

The court noted that more than three million successful dives took place worldwide in 2020, and the risk of tripping in skydiving remains very low.

But Hoare’s colleague, tandem master Kyle Nicholson, told the court he was so unwell he gave up skydiving after completing more than 3,700 jumps.

While Welling’s family were too traumatized to read victim impact statements at the hearing in early April, Hoare’s father Frank called for a criminal investigation to prevent similar accidents.

In an extraordinary gesture of kindness, he said that he had no animosity towards Ferrara or Czerwinski.

“In the end, there was no intention,” Hoare said quietly.

The thought of the two men jumping and laughing and embracing life in their final hours brings some relief to the family.

“This image fills me with joy,” Hoare’s sister Fiona said in a statement read to the court.

“This is an example of the man my brother was.”