Mail plane's black box sent to Australia

Fire and rescue crews at the scene of the crash east of Stratford Tuesday night. Picture / Fotopress

Investigators will continue to search today for missing pieces of a plane that crashed in Taranaki on Tuesday night as they try to form a picture of what caused the fatal crash.

The Airworks Metroliner, carrying courier cargo from Auckland to Blenheim, crashed about 10.15pm Tuesday, 5km east of Stratford, killing Clive Rodger Adamson, 43, of Wellington, and Anthony Brian Arthur Drummond, 41, of Manukau City.

Transport Accident Investigation Commission (Taic) investigator John Goddard told National Radio that today would involve more "leg work" at the accident scene.

"Today we need to look at and find the other significant parts of the plane we haven't seen yet, " he said.

"The detail of the pieces of wreckage would start to fill in a picture of the way things happened."

Meanwhile, the plane's black box and flight recorder, which were located yesterday, will be sent to Australia for specialist analysis.

"We will be taking them across to Canberra to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau who have a specialist lab where they can extract the data from them for us," Mr Goddard said.

"That is a very specialist job and they have one of the few such places around the world."

Mr Goddard said it was too early to know whether the plane had exploded in mid-air, as described by witnesses.

"There has certainly been an inflight fire -- exactly at what stage of the whole sequence that happened I don't know at this point," he said.

But early indications were that the courier packages being carried were not the cause of the fire.

"A preliminary look at it suggests the fire has been external to the cargo hold," he said.

Courier packages were scattered over farmland around the crash scene, the location of which also provided information to investigators.

"That has the potential to tell us the sequence of break-up of the aircraft," Mr Goddard said.

But the main focus today was on the remaining pieces of wreckage and more police were at the scene helping with the search, he said.

"It's quite a lot of basic leg work really. With luck we'll be able to allow the cargo to be removed (today), leaving us with just the aircraft wreckage."

Mr Goddard said investigators had been in touch with the US manufacturers of the plane, and they may assist in the investigation.

"We may well be getting some assistance from them from the United States. They're waiting for more information from us to decide whether they need to come and help. There's quite a lot of interest in the States, in terms of manufacture, about this accident."

The plane had been in contact with air traffic controllers before it vanished suddenly from radar screens, without any distress calls.

Until Tuesday's crash, the twin-prop Fairchild Metroliner SA227-AC, had a clean safety record, Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Bill Summer told NZPA.

The planes are usually used to transport cargo, especially post, but can carry passengers.

The pilots' bodies were removed from the wreckage yesterday and post mortem examinations would be carried out today.

- NZPA