By PATRICK GOWER AND NZPA
The eyes of crash survivor Richard Barton opened, then flickered, when his two young sons stood at his hospital bedside yesterday.
Mr Barton, one of two survivors of the crash that took the lives of seven of his colleagues and the pilot on Friday, has been heavily
sedated.
He is in a stable condition in Christchurch Hospital after spending 2 1/4 hours waiting to be found by rescuers.
Seated near the front of the plane, he was reading a magazine when there was a "bang" and the plane crashed.
His mother, Ida, said yesterday that the 44-year-old had suffered a broken left leg and collarbone. Mrs Barton said there were other "wee injuries", including a perforated lung.
She said doctors were reducing the sedatives and he was "on the way back", especially after a visit from sons Rory, 13, and Andrew, 11. "Richard flickered his eyes - he knew the boys were there with him."
His wife, Cathie, talked of how her husband mumbled, "I love you, I love you", through an oxygen mask as he lay in the hospital's emergency department after being pulled from the Air Adventures wreckage.
Mr Barton, Crop and Food Research finance manager, talked of his seven dead colleagues, she said. "He mentioned all of the names of the people and talked about their children.
"He kept saying, 'I am cold, I am cold'."
Mrs Barton had sleepily kissed her husband goodbye at 6am on Friday.
Yesterday she and her sons met the rescuers who first reached the crash site, she said.
The rescuers, who initially thought cries for help from Mr Barton and fellow survivor Tim Lindley, the CFR business manager, were bird calls, said the two men's first words were: "Get us out of here".
They were still strapped into their seats. Mr Lindley, 55, is understood to have been in the cockpit.
Doctors had said Mr Barton survived because he was very fit, which Mrs Barton said was from keeping busy with his sons' cricket and recreational boating.
