The wreckage of a plane missing in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains since Tuesday has been located.<\/p>\n
Bega man David Stephens had his plane inspected before taking off from Wangaratta in Victoria on Tuesday afternoon, headed for Moruya on the NSW south coast.<\/p>\n
The 74-year-old never arrived at his destination, and an extensive land and air search commenced.<\/p>\n
About 4pm on Thursday, a rescue helicopter located what is believed to be the wreckage of the plane near its last known GPS location.<\/p>\n
“NSW Police Force now have carriage of this matter with investigations to continue tomorrow,” NSW Police said.<\/p>\n
Police are yet to provide an update on the pilot, Mr Stephens.<\/p>\n
Bega man an ‘experienced pilot’<\/p>\n
The wife of Mr Stephens described him as an experienced flyer and said the situation had been “heartbreaking” for his family.<\/p>\n
Lynda Leigh, issued a statement to the ABC, saying Mr Stephens was a member of the Frog’s Hollow Flyers aero club.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, David disappeared on his flight home on Tuesday after having his aircraft inspected,” she said in the statement.<\/p>\n
“It is known that the mountain weather can turn very quickly, and we can only assume he must have seen a way over the mountain to decide not to turn back to Wangaratta.<\/p>\n
“David has quite a bit of experience flying that plane, but we can’t know what situation he was facing, and we’ll only have answers once they locate the plane and with that David.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
David Stephens was passionate about flying since a young age, seen here with his father. (Supplied: Lynda Leigh)<\/p>\n
Frog’s Hollow Flyers aero club president Tony Rettke said Mr Stephens got his 1966 Beechcraft Debonair plane serviced at Wangaratta.<\/p>\n
“[It would] only be a minor amount of work, the aircraft was immaculate, an incredibly beautiful aircraft, well maintained,” he said.<\/p>\n
“He must have done everything he needed to do, just with a basic service, probably an oil change, the usual stuff that goes with 100 hours, and he headed off that afternoon.”<\/p>\n
Ms Leigh said Mr Stephens was an accountant and was just two months away from retiring.<\/p>\n
She said he was also a well-known rally sport commentator on the Sapphire Coast region.<\/p>\n
“Which makes the situation more heartbreaking as his family was looking to spend more time with him after decades of work,” Ms Leigh said.<\/p>\n
Heavy snow and rugged terrain made search efforts in the NSW Snowy Mountains challenging. (Supplied: NSW Police)<\/p>\n
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) led the multi-agency search for Mr Stephens and his plane.<\/p>\n
“The trails are heavily snowed in. It’s very rugged terrain and very steep alpine terrain that they’re trying to navigate through,” AMSA duty manager Dan Gilllis said.<\/p>\n
The search involving multiple agencies commenced on Tuesday, assisted by NSW Police, NSW SES, the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Snowy Hydro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wreckage of a plane missing in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains since Tuesday has been located.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1156,64,63,1154,1161,1151,1159,44,1152,1160,1155,1158,1157,1153],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-aircraft","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-crash","tag-david-stephens","tag-missing-pilot","tag-missing-plane","tag-news","tag-nsw-snowy-mountains","tag-pilot","tag-plane","tag-police","tag-rescue","tag-seach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","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=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}