Weather halts recovery of bodies from Fox Glacier

FOX GLACIER – Investigators say they are a “long, long way” away from knowing why a sightseeing helicopter crashed into a New Zealand glacier, killing seven people including two Australian tourists.

Rescue crews need a substantial break in bad weather to resume the recovery operation.

Sovannmony Leang, 27, and Josephine Gibson, 29, both from Sydney, died when the helicopter plunged into the heavily-crevassed Fox Glacier during bad weather on Saturday.

Four British tourists and the New Zealand pilot also died.

The four Britons were identified as Andrew Virco, 50, and Katharine Walker, 51, of Cambridge, and Nigel Edwin Charlton, 66, and Cynthia Charlton of Hampshire.

Specialist alpine rescuers managed to recover four bodies on Sunday but bad weather has hampered the recovery operation.

“We are a long, long way from identifying the circumstances and causes of this accident,” Transport Accident Investigation Commission investigator Peter Northcote said.

Inspector John Canning said conditions were not expected to clear until Wednesday.

“We’ve done the easy bits with the recovery so far from helicopters, but now we’ve got to put boots on the ice,” he told reporters.

“To do that, we’re going to have to build a staging point and put equipment in place so that we can get our workers across there safely.”

Northcote said a full probe into the accident could take 18 months, with the immediate hunt for clues on hold due to poor weather at the crash site.

Alpine rescue team leader Marius Bron said ice on the glacier was loosely packed and constantly moving, with crevasses up to 20 metres deep.

“If you imagine a giant bowl of popcorn — the ice is all stacked up and unstable, there’s lots of gaps in there — that’s what we’re dealing with,” he said.

Police were only alerted when the helicopter’s emergency locator beacon was activated late Saturday morning.

Debris was later found scattered over several hundred metres with the main part of the helicopter wedged between house-sized blocks of ice.

The 13-kilometre-long Fox Glacier, on the west coast of the South Island, is listed as one of the world’s most accessible glaciers and attracts thousands of tourists each year.

There was another aviation crash in the area in September 2010, when nine people died after a skydiving plane plunged to the ground then burst into flames shortly after take-off.

- AFP/ABC