RELATIVES OF the four people who lost their lives when an English-registered light aircraft crashed in the Wicklow Mountains on Saturday began arriving in Ireland yesterday afternoon.
They were briefed by gardaí in Baltinglass on the grim find earlier in the day of the wreckage of a Piper PA-28 aircraft in a remote boggy area.
It was the aircraft their relatives had been travelling in and even at that stage it was presumed there would be no survivors.
The front of the aircraft was embedded in peat and emergency personnel carrying cutting equipment had to be airlifted by Air Corps helicopter to the crash site.
The aircraft had left Gloucester airport in the UK shortly before 10am on Saturday, bound for Kilrush airfield in Co Kildare.
The last radar sighting of it was at about 12.30pm that day over the Wicklow Mountains.
Lilian Cassin, corporate communications manager with the Irish Aviation Authority, said Dublin air traffic control worked with the aircraft and "it was handed over to Kilrush frequency at 12.17pm on Saturday".
There was nothing, she said, to indicate there was any problem with the aircraft or anything untoward at that stage.
"When we handed him over he only had 20 miles to go and that would not be unusual . . . he had closed his flight plan," she added.
It was the pilot's responsibility, she said, to advise Kilrush he was coming.
Ian Valentine, the operator of Kilrush airfield, said the pilot had been using the airfield for several years to visit relatives in Newbridge. He received a text message from the pilot last week to say he expected to arrive at the weekend. He would have expected a call on the day of the flight but did not receive one.
He was thus not aware the aircraft was due to land at his strip on Saturday until a relative of the pilot contacted him from Gloucester on Saturday evening.
Supt Michael Lernihan said gardaí were notified of the missing aircraft on Saturday evening and were given details of its last radar position in the Wicklow Mountains.
He said that after news that the aircraft was missing was broadcast on Saturday night, gardaí received two calls with information, including one from a hillwalker, who heard an aircraft in a mountainous area south of Holywood on Saturday.
A search of this area by the Air Corps and four mountain rescue teams - including the Glen of Imaal and Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue teams, assisted by mountain rescue teams from the southeast and Northern Ireland - began at first light yesterday and the wreckage was found within a couple of hours.
During the day, in bitter winds, the Air Corps ferried firemen, paramedics and air crash investigators to and from the crash site from an incident point set up on the roadside between Glendalough and Hollywood.
Supt Lernihan said last night the crash site has been secured pending the removal of the aircraft by the Air Accident Investigation Bureau.
Air investigators will be looking to see if bad weather on Saturday was one of the factors that led to the crash. They will also be examining the aircraft itself.