The pilot of a skydiving plane that plunged in to Lake Taupo saw flames coming out of the aircraft's engine exhaust moments after its engine suddenly stopped.

Director of Skydive Taupo says survivors of plane crash have nothing but praise for instructors.

The type of New Zealand-built aircraft involved in yesterday's skydiving crash has never been in an accident due to a mechanical error before, its maker says.

"Exiting a plane at low altitude to get out and activate parachutes and have them open normally and land safely is amazing."

Pictures show the wreckage of flight QZ8501 lying on the bottom of the Java Sea, including what appears to be the tail fin showing the AirAsia logo.

A passenger plane travelling from Fiji to New Zealand was forced to turn around when its cabin filled with fumes and an oil smell overnight.

The pilot of a skydiving plane that crashed into Lake Taupo has been praised for quick thinking after all 13 people on board escaped without injury.

Qantas has been named the world's safest airline, and Air NZ is in the top ten, according to a new report which also noted 2014 was a bad year for airline safety.

AirAsia crash victim's family learned of their loved one's fate after being sent a selfie he featured in, taken on board flight QZ8501 as it prepared for takeoff.

A report of a light plane crash at a Northland beach was a false alarm.

New Zealand double Olympic gold medallist Valerie Adams had a scare when a plane she was on started to skid off a runway in Tonga.

Olympic gold medallist Valerie Adams escaped a possible aircraft crash after a plane she was on started skidding off a runway in Tonga.

Every day more than 8 million people travel in planes, taking around 50,000 flights. For an activity that's so commonplace, flying engenders a lot of fear and superstition.

Crash experts say doomed AirAsia flight dropped almost vertically into the water as if being thrust down by a giant hand.

A temporary break in poor weather yesterday failed to help the search for wreckage from AirAsia Flight QZ8501.

Such was the self-congratulatory tone of an industry proud of a declining trend in crashes. Just at the moment, however, there is much less cause for back-patting.

First Air, a Canadian airline flies across some of the most remote and sparsely populated areas on the continent - its planes are often beyond the reach of conventional radar.

Indonesian search officials have now confirmed they have located the fuselage of AirAsia flight 8501 on sonar radar, upside down on the sea floor.

The search area was widened because surveillance planes could not see tiny fragments of wreckage in choppy waters. And families, once again, did not know how or why their loved ones died.

Pilot of Virgin transatlantic flight forced to perform an emergency landing on broken landing gear.

Warship sent to take oil sample as air traffic control chief reveals pilot's request came just minutes before plane disappeared.

Airbus has rushed two specialists to Jakarta to assist in the investigation of the disappeared A320 airliner operated by AirAsia, the budget carrier that rose from almost nothing in 2001 to be its biggest customer.

An Indonesian official last night said objects had been spotted in the sea by a search plane hunting for the missing AirAsia jet.

The billionaire CEO of AirAsia has described the disappearance of flight QZ8501 as his "worst nightmare", as the search for the missing plane resumes.

Flight attendant onboard missing AirAsia flight had tweeted a message of support to families of those lost in MH17 disaster just months before his own plane disappeared.

This year began with the aviation industry celebrating a century of passenger flights - it ends with a jet with 162 aboard missing while flying from Indonesia to Singapore.

Air New Zealand's flights to Buenos Aires will be more than a third filled with passengers from Australia, an analysis of the service says.

Fearful friends and relatives of passengers on board the missing AirAsia flight have gathered at emergency centres awaiting news of the search and rescue operation.

162 people on board flight QZ8501 that went missing between Indonesia and Singapore.