A full-scale search and rescue operation is to resume this morning for the two Albatross aircraft missing in the Wolkberg mountains, near Tzaneen, since Sunday.
Five helicopters, including an SA Airforce Oryx, will continue the search in the difficult terrain of the Wolkberg mountains, Limpopo.
The search was called off at around 4.30pm yesterday when low cloud and fog frustrated the search teams. The weather in and around Tzaneen is expected to clear today.
By late last night, there was scant information about what happened to the two aircraft and their 14 passengers, who went missing shortly after take-off from the Tarentaal airstrip, about 15km outside Tzaneen, at noon on Sunday.
Two pilots, three children - two sisters aged nine and seven, and a 14-year-old girl - and nine adults were returning from a trip to the Tzaneen Air Show on Saturday.
By midday yesterday a full-scale search and rescue operation was under way with helicopters, 4x4 vehicles from the Off-Road Rescue Unit and more than 100 people on foot fine-combing a vast area between Maake and George's Valley, in the Wolkberg.
Joint Operations Centre head Hannes Steyn said rain and low cloud had hampered operations but vehicles with rescue equipment searched a "very wide area" while pilots waited for the cloud to clear.
"All the ground teams are busy," he said.
SA Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Phindiwe Gwebu said a CAA investigator was in Tzaneen "on stand-by".
"We avoid commenting or speculating when a plane goes missing because an impression could be created that people have died," said Gwebu.
At Rand Airport, in Germiston, east of Johannesburg, where a trauma centre has been established, emotions ran high. Family and friends of the 14 missing people clung to hope.
The two planes are privately owned.
Air Traffic and Navigation Services spokesman Anna Sanfilippo said the service was involved in the search but the planes went missing outside of "controlled airspace". She said that pilots "did their own thing" in uncontrolled airspace.
The authorities refused to release the names of the people on the flights.
Media reports incorrectly naming passengers led to further trauma yesterday.
One of the passengers who has been confirmed to have been on one of the flights was Linda Pierce, fiancee of Athol Franz, editor of African Pilot magazine. Franz confirmed this to The Times yesterday.
For about 80 friends and relatives who had gathered at the Henley Air trauma centre at Rand Airport, the strain of the uncertainty surrounding the missing relatives was too much to bear.
Some relatives, including young children and elderly people, cried while others hugged each other and offered words of support.
Some of the relatives spent the entire night at the centre, hoping for a scrap of positive news about their loved ones.
The parents of the two young missing sisters spent the night at the centre but left for Tzaneen early yesterday.
Said one sobbing relative: "I don't know how to deal with this. Faith will get us through, I suppose. Oh God, please be with them. Let them be alive". She was too emotional to give her name.
For another, the situation was too difficult to bear: "I'm sorry, but I can't handle this," she said.
The Henley Air Trauma Unit's psychologist, Professor Johann Coetzee, who headed a team of six counsellors, was called in at 4pm on Sunday after concerns mounted when the aircraft did not land as scheduled.
Coetzee said heavy fog had delayed the planes' take-off by an hour but that they eventually took to the air at noon. A flight from Tzaneen can take anything up to 90 minutes.
He said alarm bells went off when four other aircraft that departed after the two Albatrosses landed safely.
"The two Albatrosses left in formation and should have been here at Rand Airport at about 1:30pm but by 4pm there was nothing."
Coetzee said the families were "trying hard to remain positive" but they were "distraught".
Defence spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini said they would assess operations and might despatch more helicopters. -
Additional reporting by Harriet Mclea
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