A villager in Papua New Guinea this morning provided searchers with their first lead in finding the helicopter and three crew members - two Australian and one New Zealander - missing since last week.
Australians Russell Aitken, 42, and licensed aircraft maintenance engineer Emmett Fynn, 36, were on board a Bell 206 helicopter that went missing near Mount Hagen in the PNG highlands on Thursday. New Zealander Antony Annan, 49, was also on board.
Operator of the aircraft Hevilift said in a statement that the villager was searching the waterways and rivers when he found some pieces of plastic that were clearly from a “fly away kit” that is usually kept in the boot of the helicopters operated by Hevilift. It is a plastic container that holds items such as oil, rags and grease guns.
“It is obvious that it is part of the missing helicopter as it is consistent with the size and shape of the container we use for the kit and it has what we believe to be the outline of an 'H' in blue paint. We paint the helicopter registration number, in this case HCY, on each container,” said Mr Ian McBeath, Eastern Region, Hevilift (PNG).
When the villager found the piece he returned to Umasia Village on the Purari River, about 12 kilometres from where he found it. When search headquarters got the news about noon local time, an aircraft was sent to pick up the villager and have him show searchers where the debris was located.
When that position was determined, searching began upstream. Another villager then flagged down the search helicopter, about half a mile upstream, and provided a second piece of the same plastic container.
“The search effort was rapidly redeployed following this development,” said Mr McBeath.
“Regrettably these broken pieces of container would most likely indicate that there has been a hard landing and the aircraft has broken up.
“Finding these pieces means the search area has narrowed significantly. However, we still have a large section of countryside to cover.
"We have been advised that there was very heavy rain in the area last night and this has most likely flushed these items out of the bush and into one of the dozens of rivulets that run into the Gipi Creek which runs into the Purari River.
“We now know that the area where we have been searching was the correct one and we can concentrate the ground search teams upstream of the location of where the debris was found, which is five miles [eight kilometres] from Bawata,” Mr McBeath said.
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