A search is underway for two people aboard a twin-engined aircraft that ditched in the sea off Kawhia at around 12.20pm today after reporting engine failure.

The Civil Aviation Authority has been told it needs to keep better records on flight training incidents after an investigation found insufficient evidence to link an increase in fatalities to a decline in training safety.

A pilot who ditched his helicopter in a Northland bay has been slammed by crash investigators for a series of failings.

Senior air force commanders are under investigation over the Anzac Day tragedy which left three staff dead and another seriously injured - but there is only a month left to lay charges.

The military inquiry into the firefight in Afghanistan that left two soldiers dead is unlikely to be made public, the New Zealand Defence Force says.

The lead pilot of the air force's fatal Anzac Day formation is being made a scapegoat for failures right up the command chain, says the father of one of the men who died in the 2010 crash.

An RNZAF officer has been charged over the fatal Iroquois crash at Pukerua Bay on Anzac Day 2010.

A New Zealander is suing for more than half a million dollars after he was seriously injured when his international flight plunged more than 200 metres in two seconds.

The pilot of a microlight that crashed on Wednesday night, killing two men, has has been described as a fun-loving family man.

A father who found the wreckage of a microlight in which his son and another man were killed says he knew the risks and "you can't cover your kids up in cotton wool".

The bodies of the three Canadian men believed killed in a plane crash in Antarctica will not be recovered until at least October, Antarctica New Zealand says.

A rigging supervisor who narrowly escaped death in a helicopter crash is fighting to overturn official findings that hold him partly responsible.

A Civil Aviation Authority report into a helicopter crash which killed two Far North men a year ago will be completed early next year.

Safety systems across the entire air force are in for an overhaul after an independent review into the Anzac Day crash found greater change was needed.

A skydiver has been killed in a mid-air collision with another parachutist at Wilton in Sydney's southwest.

Footage of the police anti-terrorist team sliding down ropes on to a ferry in a helicopter training exercise shows why passengers saw the incident as a near-disaster.

Three airmen killed in an Anzac Day helicopter crash were on a one-hour flight because it was considered too expensive to accommodate them in a hotel.

The father of a British woman who vanished while on a helicopter trip in Fijordland in January 2004 has spoken for the first time about her remains being discovered.

Pilot error and bad weather caused an August 2010 crash on a Papua New Guinea island that killed three Australians and a New Zealander.

The 38-year-old Italian man who died in a skydiving accident while filming a tandem jump in Wanaka yesterday has been named.

An Italian man is dead after his parachute failed to open on a skydiving flight and he crashed to his death in front of a horrified Wanaka man.

The Queenstown pilot killed when his helicopter "dropped out of the sky" last night was the chief flying instructor at Wakatipu Aero Club.

A female pilot has been killed in a helicopter crash near Wanaka this evening.