Plane ditching off Waikato coast update V
A multi-agency operation seeking to locate and recover a missing plane and its two occupants has been able to confirm a large object detected by sonar yesterday, is in fact the aircraft in question.
Officer in charge of Operation Jareth, Sergeant Warren Shaw, of the Waikato Police Search and Rescue Squad said today's activities have centred around confirming information supplied by the Navy's Mine Countermeasures Team and their ocean mapping equipment.
"Once we were able to identify the item of interest it meant we could narrow our search field considerably and deploy even more specialised equipment to the crash site.
"A team from the Police, Navy and a Civil Aviation Authority Crash Investigator boarded the Raglan Coastguard's Gallagher Rescue vessel at first light and headed out to the scene and this afternoon confirmation came back that the Remote Operated Underwater Vehicle (ROUV) had captured images of the aircraft."
Mr Shaw said while this was a success it was but a small step in the overall recovery operation and wasn't without its challenges.
"What the ROUV has shown us is that the aircraft is upside down at a depth of 56m on the ocean floor which means the agencies involved have not being able to confirm if the occupants, Mr and Mrs Hertz, are on board or not."
Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Mike Richards said the CAA is supporting the work of the Police at this time by providing an aviation expert who is helping to identify parts of the aircraft found on the seafloor.
"With the aircraft being upside down, fully submerged and bedded in the ocean floor, it is quite a difficult task to make sense of the visual images that are being relayed to the team on the surface.
"The Police and Navy are working closely on options to retrieve the occupants. Once this is done the CAA can start considering ways to carry out the investigation as to establishing possible cause or causes of the accident. The coordinated efforts of the agencies involved are both substantial and remarkable.”
Mr Shaw said while difficult, the challenges faced by the agencies involved are not insurmountable.
"We have the right people and equipment on hand, both in Raglan and elsewhere available to deploy and each agency remains committed to returning the missing couple back to their family."
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