This has happened twice in one week for me once with a full load and then yesterday (Sunday) with an empty load going to give planetary landings a miss for my cutter and use my python for that...
Hope your Cutter wasn't destroyed twice :S
Frontier recently resurrected my NPC crew member (and ship re-buy) after my ship was destroyed due to a game bug. It took three days for them to respond since they are very busy with all the tickets due to the various bugs in the game. But they did restore my elite NPC crew.
Thanks, except I don't believe they will classed mine as a bug - landing gear caught onto a landing pad :S