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PORT MORESBY: Six people, including two children, are dead and an Australian pilot is seriously injured after a light plane crashed in Papua New Guinea, an official said on Thursday.
The Cessna 185 went down at a remote airstrip in a mountainous region of the South Pacific nation on Wednesday after making a distress call, a senior civil aviation official told AFP.
"A light airplane crashed on an airstrip in the Morobe area. Six people didn't survive," said Wilson Sagati, acting chief executive of PNG's Civil Aviation Authority.
"The pilot survived and has been evacuated to Cairns."
Reports said the plane suffered an engine fire before the crash, naming the pilot as 68-year-old Richard Leahy of Kiunga Aviation. They said the six dead, all PNG residents, included two children.
Sagati added that the pilot, the sole survivor, was picked up by a passing helicopter at the isolated airstrip.
"The pilot made a distress call but did not give the nature of the distress call," Sagati said, adding the crash was under investigation.
"The circumstances are unknown at this stage."
Radio New Zealand quoted Leahy's son as saying the pilot was being treated in an Australian hospital for serious burns and a spinal fracture.
"He's got third-degree burns to 47 per cent of his body," Nicholas Leahy said.
The incident comes after a Twin Otter aircraft crashed over jungle-covered PNG in August, killing 13 people including nine Australians and one Japanese.
- AFP/yb
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