Pacific

Airline owner among dead in PNG air crash

13:41 pm on 1 September 2010

The owner of the charter company Trans Air, Les Wright, is believed to be one of the four people killed in a plane crash in Papua New Guinea yesterday.

The aircraft was operated by Trans Air.

Three Australians and a New Zealander died when the jet reportedly overshot a runway on Misima island off the Milne Bay mainland during wet and windy weather.

Trans Air, which runs a charter and medivac service in PNG, is linked to the now defunct Australian airline Transair, which went into liquidation after a 2005 crash in north Queensland in which 15 people died.

Another of the PNG fatalities was 61-year-old marine pilot Chris Hart, of Sydney, who was on his way to guide a ship from Misima through the Great Barrier Reef.

One person, a New Zealander, survived the crash.