Six people killed in light plane crash
22:15 AEST Wed Jul 28 2004
Five senior timber company executives were among the two women and four men killed when a light plane crashed in rugged and inhospitable country in Victoria's north-east.
A police helicopter spotted the wreckage of the Piper Cheyenne aircraft at 5.50pm (AEST) on Wednesday, about six hours after it went down in bad weather 30km south-east of Benalla.
There were no survivors, Australian Search and Rescue spokesman Ben Mitchell said.
"It's been a high-speed impact and the cabin has been consumed by fire," he said.
"The paramedics have assessed the crash as non-survivable."
The aircraft was carrying executives of Sydney-based timber company D&R Henderson Pty Ltd from Bankstown, in Sydney's south-west, to Benalla, 160km north of Melbourne, where the company has a sawmill and chipboard plant.
The company said five of its senior managers were on board along with a pilot who had been used by the company for 15 years and who had logged some 1,500 hours of flying time.
"There were six people on board, all associated to D&R Henderson, so all are known to the rest of the staff and the organisation," a company spokesman said earlier, as hopes faded for the aircraft.
"It's basically a family company - we employ four hundred people, everyone knows everyone, so this has hit everyone pretty hard."
General manager Darren Smith said the pilot flew the company plane on weekly trips from Bankstown to Benalla.
The company is headed by directors David and Robert Henderson and opened its first warehouse in Sydney in 1964.
Weather conditions in the area at the time the plane disappeared were bad, with low cloud, rain and snow, authorities said.
Australian Air Services spokesman Richard Dudley said the last radar contact with the plane was at 5,000 feet, 33km south-east of Wangaratta, where weather conditions were severe.
Before contact was lost at 11am (AEST), the aircraft was around 60km from what would have been an instrument landing at Benalla.
Wangaratta Superintendent Trevor Carter said the plane crashed in inhospitable terrain which was heavily timbered and on a steep slope.
The crash site was not accessible by car and it took police 20 minutes to walk there, he said.
"It's obviously very dense terrain and it has taken us some time to get there and to get to the crash site, as you can imagine," told reporters in Benalla.
"The crash site is quite significant.
"There is a large amount of debris so the full extent and circumstances of the collision will have to be examined tomorrow."
Police said two of those on board were from Queensland and the four others were NSW residents.
The crash site has been secured by police and the coroner and police investigators will be on the site tomorrow morning.
The Air Transport Safety Bureau will launch an investigation into the accident tomorrow.
A bureau spokesman said he expected six investigators would arrive at the crash scene by mid-morning.
İAAP 2004