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New Zealand helicopter crash: two Australians and four Britons among seven killed New Zealand helicopter crash: two Australians and four Britons among seven killed
(about 5 hours later)
Two Australians and four Britons were among seven people believed to have been killed when a helicopter crashed at a popular New Zealand tourist site, local police said. Seven people, including four British and two Australian holidaymakers, died in a helicopter crash at a popular tourist attraction on New Zealand’s South Island on Saturday.
The aircraft went down on Saturday morning at Fox Glacier in the South Island and bad weather continued to hinder recovery attempts overnight. Police said they believed none of the seven people on board, including the pilot, survived the crash. Bad weather conditions meant that rescuers struggled to recover the bodies of the pilot and his six passengers from the wreckage of the aircraft, which went down in challenging and dangerous terrain high on the island’s Fox glacier. Other tourists were in the area at the time, many of them also being ferried in helicopters.
Recovery teams were unable to reach the wreckage, which lay in a crevasse, due to difficult terrain and poor visibility. Police added that next of kin were being notified. A paramedic had been winched down to the site of the crash and reported that there were no survivors, but a recovery effort and scene examination was “likely to take some days”, police said.
A spokesman for the New Zealand police said: “Police believe the passengers in the helicopter crash on Fox Glacier were six foreign tourists. It is believed two were Australians and four were from the United Kingdom. Formal identification of those people will take some time. Inspector John Canning said the helicopter was in a crevasse 750 metres (2,500ft) up the valley. Debris was scattered across hundreds of metres around the crash site, which was in a “heavily crevassed” area. “I’m not going to risk any more lives. We’ve lost seven,” Canning said.
“Police have been liaising with the embassies of the countries concerned to ensure the next of kin are advised of the situation.” He added that his officers were liaising with the embassies of the countries concerned to inform the victims’ families. The UK Foreign Office confirmed that it had traced and contacted relatives.
The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said: “We hold grave concerns for two Australians who were believed to have been on board and we have spoken with the families concerned. My sympathies are with the families of the crash victims at this very distressing time.” The accident is not the first in New Zealand’s ice fields, an area of natural beauty that attracts many tourists and where dozens of local guides and tour operators work. Three people were hurt in a helicopter crash in June, while a man died and five others were injured last year.
Four rescue helicopters were sent to Fox Glacier on the remote west coast of the South Island, a New Zealand Rescue Coordination Centre spokesman said. Rob Jewell, chairman of the Glacier Country Tourism Group, which represents operators providing visitor services at Fox glacier and nearby Franz Josef glacier, said everyone was deeply shocked by the accident: “We’re a small-knit community here. It’s a small village and everyone knows everybody, so it’s a matter of looking after each other.
“We’re hurting. It’s a real tragedy today. We’ll just do what we can to make this as easy as we can for everybody, and obviously our thoughts are with those who lost their lives today and their families and friends. We are still piecing together all the details – once confirmed, we will put out a statement.”
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A paramedic was to be winched down to the crash site to assess the situation and a cliff rescue team was also being sent to the area. Weather conditions around the glacier were described as terrible with heavy rain and poor visibility. Another member of the group, Chris Alexander, said that the emergency services had tried “their damnedest” to reach the scene.
Police said they were planning for a recovery operation on Sunday morning. An American tourist who was on a different tour on the glacier said that no one had been aware of the crash until after they had returned to the tour office base. Alexander Baranda, a sports photographer, said flights had been cancelled earlier in the week due to poor weather, but had gone ahead Saturday morning. He had been on the mountain with 22 others in several helicopters, taking the 10-minute flight up the glacier before a three-hour guided tour along the ice.
“It wouldn’t be a good day to be flying helicopters,” Grey district mayor Tony Kokshoorn told the New Zealand Herald. “Everything is against a rescue [mission]. It will be cold up there. And the problem is amplified by the cloud cover. A spokesman for Alpine Adventures, which operated the single-engine Squirrel helicopter, confirmed it was on a scenic flight with six passengers on board.
Kokshoorn said the region had seen a bumper start to the Southern Hemisphere tourist season, but that bad weather had been putting pressure on some operators. New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) said it would investigate the cause of the crash and had sent four officials to Fox glacier. The crash comes weeks after the TAIC admitted there had been flaws in its 2012 report into an aircraft crash on Fox in September 2010, when nine people, including four tourists, died.
“It can be a fine line,” he said. “Operators are doing their best to get people up there, but obviously something went badly wrong.” Overseas relatives of some of the victims have been highly critical of TAIC’s handling of the investigation.
Kokshoorn told AP that weather was marginal at the time of the crash, with intermittent rain showers and low cloud. “It was not ideal for helicopter flying,” he said.
He also said the glaciers have been retreating in recent years and that the only way to view them up close was by helicopter. He said operators offer different packages, and a basic trip typically involves a 10-minute flight to the top of the glacier, where tourists can walk around for about half an hour before returning.
The downed helicopter was reported to belong to a company called Alpine Adventures. The company, which is based near the glacier, confirmed its helicopter was involved in the incident, but a spokesman declined to comment further. Its website says it has been in business for about 30 years and runs “an impressive fleet of modern turbine helicopters”.
The eight-mile (13km) glacier is the longest on the west coast of the South Island, travelling from the edge of the Mount Cook national park in the Southern Alps towards the Tasman Sea coast.
The helicopter came down on the glacier, a popular spot with tourists, at about 11am on Saturday (0000 GMT).
In 2010, nine people were killed when a skydiving plane crashed at the end of the runway of Fox Glacier airport. Four were tourists and five were locals.