PNG plane engines 'over-revving'

5:35 AM Saturday Nov 5, 2011

Witnesses to a fiery air crash in Papua New Guinea in which 28 people died but a Kiwi pilot walked away with bruises reported a loud bang as the engines over-revved.

The country's Aircraft Investigation Commission yesterday issued a graphic preliminary report - although without any conclusive findings - into the crash of an Airlines PNG Bombardier Dash-8 on October 13. Co-pilot Campbell Wagstaff, whose parents live in Te Kuiti, survived the fiery crash with only three others.

The aircraft left a trail of wreckage 300m long, but evidence from marks on the trees and the ground indicated to the investigators that it force-landed in "a controlled state in a shallow angle of descent".

Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were recovered undamaged and taken to Canberra for analysis.