Brother 'heard helicopter pilot call for help'

Missing helicopter pilot and liquor magnate Michael Erceg's brother said today he heard him calling for help as he flew in a searching helicopter yesterday.

Ivan Erceg said the call "We're down here" was heard over an emergency radio beacon as he and several others flew over Mt Pirongia near Kawhia Harbour on the west coast of the North Island.

Ivan Erceg said he was convinced it was his brother's voice.

"It just zapped us. It was a voice I have heard before. It was a voice I know that is tired. It sounded exactly like my brother's voice."

The voice transmission was heard more than two weeks after Mr Erceg and his passenger Dutch beer company executive Guus Klatte disappeared on on a flight from Auckland to Queenstown.

The official search was called off after several days but family has been funding a private search since then.

Details of the apparent voice traffic were passed on to the Rescue Coordination Centre today by Mr Erceg.

Rescue centre spokesman Lindsay Sturt said the information was being considered but no decision had been made about renewing the official search.

He said people needed to understand the bush could be so thick it could take a ground party hours to penetrate 50 or 100 metres.

Mr Erceg said the call was heard by four people on the searching helicopter and was the most compelling indication yet his brother was still alive.

"We got a 15 to 20 second voice transmission. We could understand it perfectly. Words like: 'We're down here'," he said.

He said the helicopter could not pinpoint the source.

"It is highly probably this transmission was actually from the aircraft."

He said the transmission put the search back into the "super urgent status" but they could not convince the Rescue Coordination Centre to reopen the search.

"We came back, all four of us on the aircraft, and had difficulty convincing others we had heard it. We were over a cone and we drifted off the cone and lost transmission."

- NZPA