The Porters and Dawsons are from Tingalpa and the D’evlins live in Manly West. Rescue crews arrive at the wreckage of a vintage plane missing since Monday. Credit:Channel Nine This afternoon, the wreckage was discovered 14 kilometres northwest of the Borumba Dam by a search helicopter which had to land 200 metres away after radioing another helicopter. They reported no survivors after hiking to the site. Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokesman Mike Barton – who knew Mr Porter as a friend – said the plane was beyond recognition when it was found.

‘‘The plane is not in a condition that you would recognise as plane,’’ he said. The wreckage of a plane crash that claimed six lives. ‘‘It hit the ground exceedingly hard, the aircraft is fundamentally destroyed.’’ Mr Barton said it would be a ‘‘fair assessment’’ to say the six people on board died on impact. Des Porter with the restored bi-plane which was used in the 1930s by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Photo: Nicola Brander, Caboolture News

‘‘It was always our hope today that we would find this site and we would find survivors but unfortunately that’s not the case,’’ he said. ‘‘It is disturbing, I personally knew the pilot, so yeah, he had a very wide group of friends and I think the antique air community are going to be quite upset that they lost him, and certainly the friends and relations of the other occupants.’’ Des Porter with his Dragon. Photo: Vicki Wood, The Sunshine Coast Daily Mr Barton said he had put his feelings aside to do his job and AMSA was coincidently poised to announce a ‘‘refocus’’ of its search on the area where the plane was found. He said it was likely the same area of difficult and rugged terrain was searched yesterday.

The wreckage was discovered when a helicopter crew noticed something red glimmering through the trees. ‘‘Aviation can be a cruel child, you only have to make small mistakes and it will catch up with you,’’ Mr Barton said. ‘‘We don’t know what happened with this one so we’ll wait for the deliberations of the transport safety bureau.’’ The search and rescue operation has now turned into a police investigation. Investigators and inspectors are expected to remain on the site for the next few days as they try to find out why the plane crashed.

Premier Campbell Newman has sent his condolences to the families of the six people killed in the plane crash. “On behalf of all Queenslanders, I wish to pass on my deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the six people who lost their lives in this tragic accident,” Mr Newman said in a statement. “I would like to acknowledge the people who worked tirelessly over the last couple of days in the search operation. “Emergency services were joined in the search by a number of private aviation companies and local residents, who gave up their time to search for the plane.”



Volunteers join search on quad bikes as dam may be searched

Police inundated with reports of sightings

Before the crash site was discovered, the aviation community had almost lost all hope there would be any survivors. As the search ramped up to 17 helicopters and one plane, the aircraft enthusiasts had been told to stop offering their services as there would be too many planes and choppers in the air, according to the organiser of the Monto Fly-In, Miles Breikreutz. The group were travelling back from the Monto Fly-In where Mr Porter had been giving joy rides to raise money for charities. Mr Breikreutz, also a board member for Recreational Aviation Australia, said Mr Porter was a well loved member of the aviation community which was feeling really "flat" about his disappearance. ‘‘At the moment everyone is really, really, flat. Very flat actually,’’ he said.

‘‘Our hopes are fading of finding any survivors now, especially since where they are looking now is very rugged terrain. ‘‘Our hopes are really fading altogether.’’ Volunteers on quad bikes and horse back joined the search on the ground while the Australian Maritime Safety Authority brought in more helicopters overnight. "They’ve asked us for all of our members not to offer at the moment to go out because they’ve got too many assets like helicopters and search aircraft out there,’’ Mr Breikreutz said. Volunteers join search on quad bikes as dam may be searched

Sunshine Coast locals Adam Wilkinson and Craig McCloud took it upon themselves to join the search for the plane, taking to the "difficult" terrain with their quad bikes. They concentrated their search to the Imbil state forest, west of the Sunshine Coast town of Kenilworth. Mr Wilkinson said a farmer reported seeing a plane in trouble flying over the Borumba dam on Monday. ‘‘He heard it come down through the clouds ... he said they were having engine problems,’’ he said. Mr Wilkinson said thick foliage in the area would make any wreckage difficult to spot from the air.

The hilly, dense terrain was also inaccessible by four-wheel-drive vehicle, he said. ‘‘Pretty much, we know the forest like the back of our hand,’’ the 25-year-old mechanic from Kenilworth said. ‘‘We know a lot of the secret tracks that go down to the forest.’’ Official search parties were considering trawling a dam near where the two locals were looking for the missing plane. An AGL Rescue Action Helicopter spokeswoman said it was possible the search could have been extended to Borumba Dam.

"We haven't made an assesment but it is something that is a possibility," she said. "We would do it in conjunction with police." There was also reports of locals, on horse back, conducting their own searches for the missing aircraft. Police inundated with reports of sightings Superintendent Terry Borland, who coordinated the search for the red De Havilland DH84 Dragon, said police had been inundated with reports of possible sightings of the plane before it went missing.

‘"We are mindful there was a lot of aicraft coming back from the Monto show so we need to be mindful of what aircraft was actually sighted and the locations of those aircraft," he said. Superintendent Borland said although it had been a cold night in the hinterland, he hoped to find the crew today "safe and well". ‘‘We are not going to speculate about whether people are alive or not, we are sitting here looking for a plane that is currently missing and our primary objective is to find that plane,’’ he said. The search resumed this morning with 14 helicopters and two planes. On Monday afternoon, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority dispatched the Maroochydore-based AGL Action Rescue Helicopter to try to locate the plane and guide its landing after it let off a distress call.

Crewman Rick Harvey may have been the last to speak Mr Porter and asked him to change his radio frequency to 125.5 because their conversation was scattered. ‘‘The last thing I heard him say was, 'Roger that, now changing to 125.5',’’ Mr Harvey told the Sunshine Coast Daily. ‘‘At the time I didn't realise we had lost contact.’’ The emergency beacon on the plane was activated about 2.30pm but has not been detected since. Mr Porter had been giving scenic flights over the long weekend, raising money for various charities as part of the Monto Fly-In.

His six friends had joined him for the weekend and they were due back in Mr Porter's red Dragon – of which there are only four in the world – at Caboolture Airport at 2.15pm on Monday afternoon. Yesterday seven helicopters and one plane searched an area of about 500 square nautical miles in the morning, and as conditions seven more helicopters and another plane joined the search. In 1954, Mr Porter was flying in a plane of the same model with his father and 13-year-old brother in Brisbane’s south to scatter one of his father’s friends ashes. The wing of the Dragon clipped a tree and cartwheeled into a creek. His brother and father drowned but Mr Porter was pulled from the plane by rescuers when water had reached his chin. He promised his mother he would never fly a plane but took it up in the 1990s when he started rebuilding a model of the Dragon.

One of the crew’s brother, Ian Dawson, was yesterday holding out hope the crew would be found alive and believed the plane had made an emergency landing instead of crashing.



As police remain on stand-by to be winched into the rugged terrain at any sign of the plane, the AGL Rescue Action Helicopters' chief executive warned search parties were not looking for ‘‘a big red aeroplane’’. Loading Instead they were looking for broken tree branches and any sign of fire. - with AAP