The couple missing since Saturday on a flight from Tasmania to New South Wales have been identified.<\/p>\n
In a statement, police said Gregory Vaughan, 72, and his partner Kim Worner, 66, from Deloraine \u2014 and their dog Molly \u2014 were flying a “light sport aircraft that departed George Town Airport at 12.45pm Saturday”.<\/p>\n
Police said the couple’s plane, a “two-seater Bristell S-LSA in distinctive green colour”, did not arrive at its destination in central NSW as scheduled and family members raised the alarm on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
No distress signal or “any other contact was received from the plane after its departure”, police said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The missing plane is a bright green two-seater Bristell S-LSA. (Supplied: Tasmania Police)<\/p>\n
Inspector Nick Clark said Tasmania Police would continue searching on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“Significant resources have been utilised in the search and [police] will continue to be used over the next two days, at which time the search efforts will be re-assessed based on any possible new information that becomes available,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The longer Gregory and Kim are missing, the greater the concerns are for their welfare.”<\/p>\n
“The best-case scenario, we can only really hope for, is they have made land somewhere.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The couple and their dog have been missing since Saturday afternoon. (Supplied: Tasmania Police)<\/p>\n
Inspector Nick Clark said helicopter sweeps of Tasmania’s north coast would continue over the coming days.<\/p>\n
“If anyone has information that could assist the search, has seen a plane matching this description, or noticed anything such as unusual debris on land or in the water, they should contact Tasmania Police on 131 444.”<\/p>\n
Inclement weather and low cloud have complicated search conditions, while boats did not go out on the water today due to the rough conditions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The search effort has involved helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft as well as ships, including for a time the Spirit of Tasmania ferry. (Supplied: Tasmania Police)<\/p>\n
‘There’s still hope’<\/p>\n
George Town Airport Association president David Brewster said the couple had been involved in aviation for “many years”.<\/p>\n
He said Mr Vaughan was a former secretary of the association and had been a “major contributor” to the airport in recent years.<\/p>\n
“There are those who always came along and always participate, and Greg was one of those,” he said.<\/p>\n
The plane took off from the small airport at George Town, in Tasmania’s north. (ABC News: Kate Nickels)<\/p>\n
He said the aviation fraternity was tight-knit, and that people across the country would be impacted by the couple’s disappearance.<\/p>\n
“I’m resigned to the reality that the likelihood of them being found alive is diminishing quite rapidly,” Mr Brewster said.<\/p>\n
“The search is still going on \u2026 until that winds down, there’s still hope.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The couple missing since Saturday on a flight from Tasmania to New South Wales have been identified. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30558,39397,39392,43,39394,39396,39393,39390,39391,39395,44,2801,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-45251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-bass-strait","tag-dog-onboard","tag-george-town-airport","tag-headlines","tag-hillston","tag-hillston-airport","tag-leongatha-aerodrome","tag-missing-airplane","tag-missing-light-plane","tag-missing-plane-search","tag-news","tag-tasmania","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}