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.

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.

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.

A helicopter pilot and three passengers had a lucky escape after crash landing on Lake Rotorua this morning.

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.

The 78 recommendations made after an inquiry into the Anzac Day Iroquois crash are not enough to prevent another tragedy, an independent review says.

A Rotorua student pilot who was killed in a crash yesterday had finished a flight lesson shortly before his plane hit the ground.