Hopes fading for missing Qld planeBy Nathan Paull
From: AAP
October 02, 2012 7:22PM
HOPES are fading of finding any survivors after a vintage plane carrying six people disappeared north of Brisbane.
Pilot Des Porter, 68, had five passengers aboard his prized red 1930s biplane, a de Havilland DH84, when he activated an emergency beacon about 1.30pm (AEST) on Monday.
Police released the names of the five passengers on Tuesday night.
Mr Porter's wife Kath, 61, Manly West couple Les D'Evlin, 75, and wife Janice, 61, and John and Carol Dawson, both 63, were on the flight.
Mr Porter made radio contact with the AGL Action Rescue Helicopter Service and told them he was 45 nautical miles north of Caboolture but had lost his bearings in low cloud cover.
The rare biplane did not have the equipment to fly in such conditions.
It lost communications about 2pm (AEST) before rescue crews could pinpoint its location and has not been heard from since.
Fifteen helicopters and a fixed-wing rescue craft spent Tuesday scouring an area of about 1800 square kilometres, ranging from west of Gympie to south of Nambour, but to no avail.
AGL Rescue crewman Rick Harvey said air crews changed search patterns on Tuesday afternoon and would scour the same area again.
He said the area included dense bushland, which made it difficult for crews to see treetops where the biplane might have crash-landed.
"It's what is often referred to as 'tiger country'," he told reporters.
Mr Harvey said Mr Porter was well known in the Sunshine Coast aviation community and sounded relatively calm when he called for help on Monday.
AGL Rescue CEO David Donaldson said their best chance of being alive was the plane having landed outside the search zone, as the obvious places for an emergency landing had already been checked.
"There's no reason to rule out the possibility of finding people alive," Mr Donaldson told AAP on Tuesday afternoon.
"But certainly as time goes on you question whether that will be the case."
Caboolture Aero Club president John Dawson said there was a "morbid" feeling at the airfield as Mr Porter's clubmates and friends braced themselves for the news they didn't want to hear.
"We all want them to be sitting in a paddock somewhere, having a picnic, waiting to be picked up," he told AAP.
"It's the horse's arse. There's nothing we can do about it."
Mr Dawson's brother Ian refused to believe he wouldn't see his sibling again.
Search coordinator Superintendent Terry Borland told reporters that ground crews were ready to be deployed as soon as air crews had pinpointed a location.
"(I'm) pretty confident really, that they haven't crashed. They might have crash-landed," he told the Brisbane Times.
Mr Porter was returning to Caboolture after spending the day raising money for charity by giving joy flights at the Monto Fly-In in central Queensland.
One of the services he was raising money for, the AGL Rescue Helicopter Service, has been instrumental in the search effort.
Mr Porter survived a 1954 air crash involving the same model aircraft.
The Brisbane Telegraph at the time reported he was flying with father James and his elder brother Keith, in a plane owned and flown by James.
The plane crashed in Doboy Creek in Brisbane's south.
James and Keith died but Mr Porter, who was 11 at the time, was saved from the sinking aircraft by rescuers, who cut a hole in the fuselage and dragged him out.
A fixed-wing aircraft is expected to continue searching overnight and the helicopters will resume at first light on Wednesday.
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/search-resumes-for-missing-qld-plane/story-fn3dxiwe-1226486223984
