Aviation graveyard a bleak look after Sundance crash

AROUND the Aero Services hangar at the coastal Republic of Congo city of Pointe-Noire, the scene is best described as the aviation equivalent of an elephants' graveyard.

AROUND the Aero Services hangar at the coastal Republic of Congo city of Pointe-Noire, the scene is best described as the aviation equivalent of an elephants' graveyard.

A row of decaying fuselages with broken and missing cockpit windows ring an expansive but worn building painted with the company's logo.

Nearby, large transport planes sit, long idle, liveries dulled with desert dust.

It may mean nothing, but it is a bleak look for a company under investigation over the crash of a Casa C212 which crashed killing all 11 on the flight, including the entire board of Perth-based mining company Sundance Resources.

It has been nine days since the crash, and the remains of the dead are now in Brazzaville, in the city's morgue, a large facility which adjoins a major hospital.

Australian Federal Police forensics experts are helping to identify the remains, along with a French medical team. It could take up to two weeks before the dead are returned to Australia.

In Congo's capital, Brazzaville, the flags are still flying at half-mast over the twin catastrophes of the Aero Services accident and a local rail disaster that killed 76.

In a show of respect and shared loss, the Congolese Prime Minister and seven senior Congolese ministers joined the Australian high commissioner-designate to Nigeria and representatives of Sundance to greet the remains of the air crash victims when they finally made it to the Congolese capital on Saturday, after a week-long struggle to recover them from a jungle mountainside.

Aero Services officials were not available to discuss the progress of the investigation or reports that it has been banned from flying to European countries because of safety concerns.

European Union records show the airline is banned from flying within the EU, and an air safety monitor has recorded three safety incidents, the most recent in January 2008, when brakes on one of their planes failed.

French and US experts will investigate the technical reasons for the crash, and Australian officials will participate in the inquiry as observers.

The plane's voice recorder was recovered last week, a short distance away from the wreckage.

Sundance adviser George Jones said the Congolese government had overall responsibility for the investigation, but had accepted the offers of help.

The plane was not pressurised and Mr Jones estimated it could only fly up to about 3000m.

Some mountains in the region reach around 1000m above sea level.

"My own feeling is the accident was weather-related . . . weather moves very quickly, I believe the pilot was caught in it, thought he knew where he was and it obviously was an error of judgment," he said.

Six of the dead were from the Sundance board -- mining magnate and one of the country's wealthiest men Ken Talbot, chairman Geoff Wedlock, managing director and chief executive Don Lewis, company secretary John Carr-Gregg and directors John Jones and Craig Oliver.

The other five victims were Mr Talbot's personal secretary and French national Natasha Flason, US citizen Jeff Duff, a French pilot, a British pilot and a British national.

The Congolese Prime Minister expressed his sympathies to the families of the deceased, as well as to the Australian government, according to a statement issued by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Sundance said the bodies had been retrieved from the crash site after recovery teams cut through about 10km of dense jungle.

A French military helicopter flew them to Yangadou, and they were taken to Ouesso by Congolese military helicopter. From there they were flown to Brazzaville by military aircraft.

Mr Jones said it could take up to a fortnight for the bodies to be repatriated to Australia.

In the midst of helping organise the repatriation yesterday, Mr Jones was waiting for a call from Tony Abbott to discuss comments made by controversial Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey, who linked the tragedy with the government's resource super-profits tax by suggesting the executives were in Africa because mineral exploration had gone offshore.

Mr Jones said the comments were "un-Australian" and has called on Mr Tuckey to resign.

The Sundance executives will be honoured by West Australia's close-knit mining community with an iron ore memorial, possibly located in Perth's Kings Park.

"It will be to these people, but also to others lost in the industry doing the sorts of things these guys were doing.

"It's an iron ore company and they're all people with iron ore experience so I think it will

be entirely appropriate," Mr Jones said.

Additional reporting: Debbie Guest