Sundance board members on the missing flight are chairman Geoff Wedlock, managing director and chief executive officer Don Lewis, company secretary John Carr-Gregg and non-executive directors Ken Talbot, John Jones and Craig Oliver. Wilson Tuckey ... flying a theory about the super profits tax. Mr Tuckey claimed the executives were in Africa looking for iron ore because the Australian government wanted to tax their super profits at a rate of 40 per cent. But Sundance has stated the executives were there visiting its ongoing iron ore project in Cameroon and Congo and conducting high-level meetings with various government representatives of both countries. The company's operations in west Africa are focused solely on developing its Mbalam iron ore project spanning Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo.

This month the company said project resources were in place to support a mine at Nabeba in the Republic of Congo portion of Mbalam, which is expected to start operations in 2012. Sundance executives and their advisers were in the midst of targeting prospective steel mills and infrastructure providers to put up project finance to build and operate the mine when the company reported the aircraft missing yesterday. The West Australian MP said it would be a "tragedy" if the mining executives were lost. "Not in any way trying to infer that there was any fault of the government or anyone else, where were they?" Mr Tuckey told reporters in Canberra today. "They were in Africa. And why where they there? They were looking for iron ore - already."

We have a stark and tragic example, apparently, telling us what's going on Mr Tuckey said the focus of Australia's mining industry had now turned to Africa. "We have a tragic example of where the mining industry is now focusing its attention. "We have a stark and tragic example, apparently, telling us what's going on." Africa was plagued by sovereign risk and "all sorts of practical problems", Mr Tuckey said.

"But on the strength of a 40 per cent increase in their tax liability it's starting to look good by comparison with Australia." Forrest feels for families Mining magnate Andrew Forrest says his thoughts are with the families. He said the Sundance executives were pursuing a dream to start a mine in west Africa. Family holds out hope Susan Carr-Gregg said her husband had been to Cameroon many times and had worked on mineral exploration and mining projects in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Madagascar.

Ms Carr-Gregg said from her home in Sydney today she hoped her husband would be found alive. Dick Smith says lack of mayday call 'very strange' Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith says it's ''very strange'' that the charter plane disappeared without a mayday message. Mr Smith, who has flown around the world five times, said: ''Even though the air-traffic control in Africa is quite often inadequate, the monitoring of frequencies for emergency messages is quite good. ''So it's very strange that an aircraft, which is a modern Western aircraft built in Spain, would suddenly disappear.''

He said the CASA 212 aircraft was a very safe, certified aircraft with two turbines and two pilots. ''There is a very tiny chance that it has been flown somewhere else, and that's a very small chance,'' he said. ''That would be one explanation for something that happened on board, which would also be quite strange seeing it was only the pilot, co-pilot and mining company people. ''It is quite mysterious at the present time that the pilot was not able to get an emergency message out. ''He said while it would be possible to survive a crash in the dense jungle, it was unlikely.

''The problem is that normally if they survive a crash they would be able to light a fire or do something that would draw attention,'' he said. ''It is quite dense jungle but normally you would think if people were alive that they would be able to create attention in some way.'' Search called off for the night Loading Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith says the search for the missing plane has been called off for the night in Africa but will resume at first light.

AAP