"Urgent Post - Mortem"
All six bodies recovered from a Cell C charter helicopter that crashed in Mpumalanga at the weekend were flown to Pretoria on Monday night for an urgent post mortem.
The deceased include Cell C sales director Ruco Durand and his wife Yvette, Nashua Mobile managing director Simon Herbert and his wife Kelly, and Click & Call managing director Jarren Koppel.
Helicopter pilot Louis Nel also died instantly when his Bell 407 helicopter crashed in thick mist in the densely-wooded Panorama Gorge on Sunday.
Rescuers, led by Graskop's volunteer civil defence team, recovered five of the bodies on Sunday but struggled until 14:00 on Monday to airlift the last body from under heavy wreckage.
"It was an extremely difficult operation. The gorge is about 200m deep, with trees up to 30m high. You can only get in from the air, and the weather was very bad with mist, rain and even hail at one stage," said rescue team leader, Sakkie van der Merwe.
"One of the women's bodies was trapped under the helicopter's engine against a tree. We eventually had to fly in special hydraulic rescue equipment from the military's Hoedspruit Airforce Base."
Stressing that aviation experts were still conducting on-site investigations, Van Der Merwe said initial evidence appeared to rule out mechanical failure. Thick mist is likely to have played a role in the tragedy.
"The wreck was still pretty intact and concentrated in a pretty tight area, with all but two bodies still inside the passenger compartment. There was no fire, and the helicopter's tail rotor was also still fairly intact," he said.
The helicopter was one of three chartered by Cell C to fly its management team back from a workshop at the exclusive Earth Lodge in the Sabi Sabi private game reserve.
"All three choppers were on their way back to Johannesburg, but were doing a bit of sight-seeing along the way. They were scheduled to stop off in Graskop, but the accident prevented this," said Cell C acting communications director, Moira Sheridan.
"It's a terrible shock. I still can't believe it. We're doing all we can to help family and friends, including offering trauma counselling."
The Durands leave two young children, a son and daughter aged two and four years, currently in the care of Ruco's brother, Albie.
Cell C chief executive Talaat Laham was in one of the two surviving helicopters, and spent all of Sunday at the crash site.
"The suddenness of the loss of life is tragic. It's been devastating for those of us who were friends and colleagues," said Laham.
Panorama Resort employee, Ri'tte van Niekerk, heard the crash impact at roughly 11:00 on Sunday but was unable to see anything due to mist.
"We heard a loud bang in the gorge, and then saw two helicopters appear. We thought the noise was caused by engine problems on one of them, and only found out about the crash later in the day," she said.
The wreck was so well shrouded by dense woodlands that rescuers, including an Airforce Oryx helicopter, only spotted the wreckage four hours later at 15:30 after combing a 10km radius.
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesperson Sibusiso Machomane confirmed that an inspection team is already on-site to probe possible causes.
"We're not sure yet, but mist seems to be the crucial factor in this tragedy. In our experience, the weather and human factor are the greatest causes of accidents," said Machomane.
CAA statistics indicate 58 people have died in air crashes so far this year, while 576 had died since 1999. The worst year during this period was 2002, when 146 people died in light aircraft crashes.
Machomane said it was currently impossible to say which province or region recorded the most deaths, or what class of aircraft had the worst track-record.
Graskop police spokesperson, Inspector Marc Pelssers, meanwhile confirmed that family and friends had driven down from Gauteng to the small holiday town to positively identify the bodies.
"All the bodies are now identified. The families have all left, and we are flying the bodies to Pretoria tonight for urgent post mortem at 08:00 on Tuesday," said Pelssers.
"This is the first aircraft crash in this district in my 11 years on the force. The support by local volunteers has been incredible. The local rescue team is virtually entirely volunteer, and was helped by volunteers from the Gauteng branch of Mountaineering SA."
Local police, SA Airforce ground crew, Sappi forest rangers and local paramedics all also assisted.
Police and CAA investigators are meanwhile probing a second aircraft crash in Mpumalanga that claimed the lives of Springbok aerobatic pilot Arrie Meyer and his passenger, Anton Luck, when their Sukhoi SU-29 aerobatic plane crashed into cliffs near the wild horse town of Kaapsehoop.
Meyer and Luck had been returning home from the Nelspruit Airshow, when they appear to have been blown off course by heavy winds during an unseasonable thunderstorm.
The men's family alerted authorities when their plane failed to arrive in Ermelo, but it took rescuers five hours to find the charred wreckage in dense plantations below Kaapsehoop's cliffs.