Plane crash

An aircraft has crashed into a mountain as it was trying to land at an airport in north-western Nepal, killing 15 people, authorities said. Six survived.

A pilot and his passenger were left floating on a wing after their plane hit the water at a remote part of Stewart Island yesterday afternoon.

The Rescue Co-ordination Centre received a distress call from a South East Air beacon at 2.45pm at Doughboy Bay, in the southwest corner of Stewart Island.

"A competent drop pilot with a smile a mile wide" was remembered and mourned in Glenorchy on Saturday afternoon, two weeks to the day after he was killed in a plane crash at Fox Glacier.

The family of a former Dunedin man who escaped injury in an aircraft crash which claimed four lives - including that of another New Zealander - is breathing a sigh of relief.

An 11-year-old girl was in critical condition with a brain haemorrhage on Tuesday, the worst injured survivor as investigators sought clues to why a jet carrying 131 people crashed while landing in a thunderstorm.

A Boeing 737 jetliner carrying 131 people crashed in a thunderstorm and broke apart as it slid onto the runway on a Caribbean island. The region's governor said it was a miracle that only one person died.

A midair collision that killed a promising young flight instructor and her student in Manawatu yesterday sounded like "a massive bomb", a shocked resident said last night.

The New Zealand pilot called a hero for landing her plane on a Darwin beach after engine failure earlier this week, is from Dunedin.

A pilot has been hurt in a microlight crash near Opunake south of New Plymouth.

An Air India Express plane trying to land in the rain at a tricky hilltop airport in southern India overshot the runway, crashed and burst into flames today, killing 158 people, officials said. At least eight survived.