A Christchurch headmaster who was caught up in the San Francisco air crash drama initially thought it was a terrorist attack.

The trainer assigned to guide a pilot who crash-landed an Asiana Airlines plane in San Francisco was on his first day in the job.

An expert in product harm says the public feels the need to quickly apportion responsibility for plane accidents.

At least one person died and 10 more were critically injured when a Boeing 777 slammed tail-first into a runway at San Francisco airport this morning, reports say.

Divers have recovered the bodies of two Maryland police officers, a day after their two-seater aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

A 50-year-old tall tale about how a table saved a man from death in the worst air disaster on New Zealand soil has been quashed by his widow.

The sole survivor of the Anzac Day 2010 military helicopter crash today launched his court bid to seek criminal prosecutions for his air force superiors.

Three Canadian men who were in a plane that crashed into one of Antarctica's highest mountains have officially been pronounced dead by a NZ coroner.

The Civil Aviation Authority has called for a report from the pilot of a helicopter that took off without him, at Tarras, on April 10.

Helicopter pilot Peter Maloney saw a warning light and within seconds knew the aircraft was going down.

A helicopter which went down in Auckland's Waitemata Harbour was the first of its kind and was due to feature in a helicopter expo in Russia in a few days.

A relieved Air Force flight lieutenant says he is still "haunted'' by a helicopter crash on Anzac Day 2010 that killed three crewmen and seriously injured a fourth.

A military tribunal has heard from more than a dozen pilots that the actions of a lead pilot on the morning of a fatal air crash were reasonable.

A military tribunal has been told an Air Force helicopter squadron treated standard orders like guidelines that gave good "generic guidance" rather than absolute orders to obey before a fatal crash three years ago.

A co-pilot in a formation involved in the fatal crash of an Iroquois helicopter three years ago has a case to answer, a military tribunal has decided.

A co-pilot in a formation involved in the Anzac Day crash says a "good proportion" of 3 Squadron pilots were outside standard orders when flying into rough weather.

The pilot in charge of a formation of Iroquois helicopters when one of the choppers crashed on Anzac Day has pleaded not guilty to a charge of negligence.

A student pilot was lucky to walk away from an emergency landing on an East Cape beach.

The plane that crashed off the coast of Kawhia last Saturday had undergone extensive repairs for damage when it ran off the end of an airstrip a year ago.

A body has been recovered from the crashed plane of 2degrees boss Eric Hertz and one of the Navy divers has been injured while working on the recovery operation.

Boaties have been asked to stay 500m from the site where the plane belonging to 2degrees chief executive Eric Hertz and his wife crashed while divers search for bodies.

Police will decide whether the wreck of the plane belonging to the 2degrees' chief executive Eric Hertz will be recovered from the seabed off the Waikato coast, the Navy says.

It is likely to be Friday at the earliest before exploration can continue at the scene of a fatal plane crash off the Waikato coast.

Plane wreckage, thought to contain the bodies of 2degrees' chief executive Eric Hertz and his wife Kathy, has been found on the sea floor off the Waikato coast.

The underwater search for plane wreckage believed to contain the bodies of 2degrees boss Eric Hertz and his wife has turned high-tech with the use of a high-tech torpedo.

The head of a Navy team using sonar to search for aircraft wreckage says it's possible the bodies of 2degrees' boss Eric Hertz and his wife Kathy may never be found.

The bodies of 2degrees chief executive Eric Hertz and his wife, Kathy, who died when their plane ditched off Kawhia on Saturday, may never be recovered.

Rescuers are struggling to reach the bodies of 2degrees' boss Eric Hertz and his wife Kathy believed to be inside the plane wreckage on the sea floor.