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Aircraft
crash in
WA claims
6 lives
PERTH: Six men believed to'bc
returning from a fishing trip died
when their Beech Baron 58 aircraft
crashed at Geraldton, 425km north
of Perth early yesterday.
Police said the pilot and his five
passengers had taken off from the
fishing resort of Denham and were
on their way to Perth when the plane
smashed into a wheat field near the
Gcraldton airport shortly after 8am.
A local charter plane operator said
it was believed the plane was making
a refuelling stop.
No explanation for the crash has
been released and the pilot had made
no apparent distress calls.
A Bureau of Air Safety spokesman
said the pilot had radioed that he was
approaching runway 03 at Gcraldton
for a normal landing.
After approaching from the north,
the pilot then made a crosswind pass
over the runway, circling in an anti
clockwise direction and intending to
then fly downwind before making ,
his final approach from the south.
But halfway through the approach
procedure the aircraft apparently
lost power, hitting the ground about
600m north of the runway.
Authorities were at first unable to
determine how many people had
died with initial reports saying only
that there were no survivors.
Police who were among the first at
the scene said two bodies had been
thrown clear of the plane on impact
and at least two more bodies were
known to be in the wreckage.
But it was not until firefighters
had spent more than four hours cut
ting through the wreckage that a fur
ther two bodies were discovered.
A police spokesman said all six
had been identified and their next of
kin notified, but he said the names of
the dead would not be released until
today.
A team of investigators from the
Bureau of Air Safety could not shed
any light on the cause of the crash.
A spokesman said the wreckage
was confined to a small area, al
though the aircraft was totally de
stroyed.
"It could be some weeks before the
full circumstances surrounding the
accident are known," he said.
Yesterday's incident was the sec
ond involving a Beech Baron aircraft
in WA in the past three days.
On Sunday a similar aircraft to the
one involved in yesterday's tragedy
made an emergency landing in
which no-one was injured at Perth
airport after its landing gear failed.
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