Bodies winched from crash scene
2005-05-09 07:55
Sydney - Police at the isolated site of a plane crash that killed 15 people lowered investigators from helicopters on Monday to recover bodies and scour the tropical hillside for clues about what caused Australia's worst air disaster in nearly a decade.
A Fairchild Metroliner plane with two pilots and 13 passengers on board slammed into a hilly, rain forest-clad terrain on the northeastern tip of Australia on Saturday, killing all on board.
"We've developed a suitable winching site that is approximately 150m from the crash site and we've cut a suitable path to do the transport by foot," Cape York district police inspector Russell Rhodes told Australian Associated Press.
The aircraft's cockpit voice and flight data recorders had been recovered from the wreckage and were being taken to Canberra for analysis.
The accident was Australia's worst air disaster since two army Black Hawk helicopters collided near the Queensland city of Townsville, killing 18 people in 1996. It was also Australia's worst civil air crash since 1968, when a plane crashed near Port Hedland in western Australia, killing 26.
The plane that crashed on Saturday was heading to Lockhart River, an Aboriginal community of 350 people in Queensland state, from the town of Bamaga near the tip of the Cape York Peninsula.
- AP