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Specialist divers are still searching for the wreckage of an Air New Zealand plane that has crashed off the coast of France.
Air New Zealand has a support team in place in Perpignan, with New Zealand-based staff including Chief Executive Officer Rob Fyfe en-route to France.
Two family members of one of the missing staff are also travelling to Perpignan. Flight schedules will be prepared for other family members should they decide to travel to France.
Group General Manager Ed Sims says the search and rescue operation continued through the night, with a total of 150 people involved, using five boats, two helicopters and a light aircraft.
Sims says the weather is making the search challenging. Thirty divers are being deployed and a minesweeper is searching for black boxes and fuselage.
The Airbus 320 went down while on a test flight bound for Perpignan airport in southeastern France with seven on board, including five New Zealanders.
Four of them worked for Air New Zealand, the other for the Civil Aviation Authority.
Air New Zealand has named its four crew as Captain Brian Horrell, 52, pilot, of Auckland; Murray White, a 37-year-old engineer also from Auckland; Michael Gyles, a 49-year-old Christchurch engineer and Noel Marsh, a 35-year-old engineer also based in Christchurch.
The Civil Aviation Authority engineer has been named as
58-year-old Jeremy Cook, an airworthiness inspector from
Wellington.
Off the coast of southern France, rescue boats with diving teams
scrambled into action and a helicopter desperately searched into
the night for survivors.
Earlier Fyfe explained to the media how four of his flight crew and a Kiwi Civil Aviation inspector, were missing.
"It rates right up there for us as something that will strongly affect the emotional fabric of our company and I'm sure will be felt by a lot of New Zealanders as well," says Fyfe.
Two bodies were recovered from the scene.
"It is very bad and the temperature of the sea is not good. So I
think it is very difficult now to find some survivors," says Ingrid
Parrot of the Toulon Regional Maritime Authority.
The aircraft that crashed was an Airbus 320 leased to Germany's XL Airways by Air New Zealand.
It had just been repainted in Air New Zealand colours and was on a test flight before being handed back when it suddenly nosedived, without any mayday, into 30 metres of water.
"The German crew were still in control of the aircraft. So the aircraft was still on the German airline's register. The role of our team was to observe the performance of the aircraft," says Fyfe.
Questions asked
Questions are already being asked after a similar crash near Perpignan a few months ago.
"Should the plane actually have taken off ? I think these are the key questions people will be asking right now," says Chris Bockman, BBC southern France correspondent.
However French authorities say the four-year-old aircraft was well maintained and the lessee had no concerns.
"We have never had a problem with the airplane and we have no idea what has happened now," says Asger Schubert, XL Airways spokesman.
Meanwhile sympathy messages are pouring in for the missing aviators.
"On behalf of all New Zealanders I'd like to express my sincere condolences to the friends, families and colleagues of the five New Zealanders now feared dead in the crash," says Prime Minister John Key.
And a shocked Civil Aviation Authority is coming to terms with losing one of its own.
"He's an aviation enthusiast as many CAA staff members are so he'll be a tremendous loss," says Graeme Harris, CAA Acting Director.
Ironically, the crash came 29 years to the day after an Air New Zealand DC10 crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica with the loss of 257 lives.
"I guess that adds a dimension to the tragedy. This is a very poignant day for Air New Zealand marking the anniversary of the Erebus tragedy," says Fyfe.
On Friday night, Fyfe is travelling to France with family members of the missing men while the search for bodies and the flight's black box resumes.
TAIC joins probe
One of New Zealand's top air investigators is also heading to France to help the search for answers.
Ken Mathews is being sent by the Transport Accident investigation Commission (TAIC) and it's expected he will take a hands-on role.
"That may require assisting them directly over there and also recovering any records or any information from New Zealand," says Mathews.
Mathews says it may mean he stays in France for a number of weeks.
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