Walker’s brother, Steve Marshall, told the Sunday Times his sister and Virco were on a “trip of a lifetime” to celebrate their 50th birthdays, and had tried to take the helicopter trip on Friday but bad weather stopped them doing so.
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YOUNG Sydney couple Josephine Gibson and Sovannmony Leang loved spontaneous adventures and would travel at the “drop of a hat”.
The young pilot with “a passion for flying” had just attended his close friend’s funeral; now his family, too, is grieving.
Seven people have been confirmed dead in a helicopter crash on New Zealand’s Fox Glacier Saturday.
Rescue crew board a helicopter to head to the Fox Glacier crash site.
“That’s partly because the crash debris is spread over several hundred metres in deep ice crevices”.
A shocking photograph had also emerged of the mangled wreckage of a commercial helicopter which crashed in bad weather.
Tributes flowed last night for the young pilot.
“He loved the outdoors”.
The West Coast relies heavily on tourism now that mining is in decline.
He had returned from Malaysia only a month ago and resumed his “summer job” based at Franz Josef for Alpine Adventures. “Its got a very good safety record”. “We’d like to think he was super cautious”.
He said winchmen had retrieved the three obvious bodies from the crash scene, but recovering the remaining four would require putting boots on the ground.
Pilot Mr Gameren, from Queenstown, New Zealand, was an experienced flier and worked for Fox Glacier Heliservices.
“He treated me like his daughter and you can’t say much more than that”.
He added: “Our thoughts are with the victims’ families at this hard time”.
The glacier’s in a remote location, and recovery of the bodies could take a number of days, police said.
Search teams were unable to reach the site during the day because of poor weather and risky terrain.
“The pilot was a very valued member of our team”, The Guardian reports.
Commission spokesman Peter Northcote said a fourth team member would arrive this morning.
Paramedics and rescue coordinators who were winched down to the crash site have found no survivors.
“There are significant safety and access aspects to this operation. We need to put together a very careful plan”.
Police were only alerted when the helicopter’s emergency locator beacon was activated late Saturday morning. He did not know whether the four other bodies were still in the helicopter.
Local media said the helicopter was operated by Alpine Adventures, which provides scenic flights and landings on the glacier.
It has been operating flights for 20 years.
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Ms Murphy said one local woman was anxious about the crash and subsequent publicity affecting the livelihoods of people in the area.
