The Civil Aviation Authority will look into why a light private aircraft crashed through a fence at the end of a runway as the pilot attempted to take off from a high country station near Queenstown on Saturday.
Authority spokesman Bill Sommer yesterday said he understood the aircraft failed to get airborne. There were no injuries.
"We'll investigate it, but we're not going to do a field investigation. We'll get the information from the pilot and look to determine the cause."
Once the authority was satisfied the cause was identified, it would decide if action was needed.
Initial information came from the New Zealand Rescue Co-ordination Centre and would be followed up by an authority report. The pilot had not contacted the authority yet, but there was standard information which would be required.
The rescue co-ordination centre detected an emergency beacon activation on Saturday at 12.10pm and about 10 minutes later, the pilot of a Heliworks helicopter found the shaken but uninjured man and woman from the plane.
The plane was thought to be a 1950s Piper Cub trainer. It had taken off from Queenstown at 11.30am and flown to the Branches High Country Station, about 30km up the Shotover River.
