Almost impossible to spot Erceg's helicopter wreckage in bush

Wreckage of Michael Erceg's helicopter. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

MT KARIOI - A sliver of bush in a farm paddock hid the wreckage of Michael Erceg's helicopter for 15 days.

It is hard to believe this small sloping gully could be so deceiving until you fly over it.

A day after the wreckage of the Eurocopter EC120 was found and chainsaws had laid waste to some trees to allow the removal of the bodies, remnants of the helicopter are still hard to make out. Flying south from Raglan, your eyes are drawn to the dense bush-covered slopes of Mt Karioi, not the thin wedge that winds through the gully dividing farmland.

Only on the third pass can you make out shards of the wreckage of the helicopter.

Taupo helicopter pilot and rescue co-ordinator John Funnell says, "Sometimes it is hard to see the helicopter for the trees".

Mr Funnell and a number of other pilots had flown over the farm in their grid search of the more likely crash site, Mt Karioi.

Mr Funnell said failure to locate the craft was compounded by its almost brown colouring, and the impact when it crashed.

Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Bill Sommer said it would have been difficult to see the wreckage from the air.

"Tom [McCreedy, the crash inspector] had to park 200m from the crash site and couldn't see it from there, and he still couldn't see it from 50m," Mr Sommer said.

"He thought it would be just as difficult to spot from above."