A man and his pregnant wife have been found dead after their plane crashed during a heavy storm in central Queensland.
Stockman Rhiley Kuhrt and his wife, Maree, were on their way to visit family when their Piper Cherokee crashed in the Mount Hector Range south of Proserpine on Sunday.
Police and emergency services found the aircraft shortly after 10am on Monday – 16 hours after it was due to land at the Lakeside Airpark in the Clarke Ranges, near Bloomsbury.
The plane had departed a cattle station, Natal Downs, south of Charters Towers, on Sunday afternoon and was expected to arrive at 5pm.
Insp Andrew Godbold said Kuhrt was an experienced pilot who owned his own plane and was the son of a local police officer.
He said the storm would have been difficult to navigate, with the couple confronted by “showers, thunder and visibility down to next to nothing” on Sunday.
Godbold said the route the couple would normally take was over the ranges and into the coastline. But at the time of the crash, they had gone back towards the ranges.
Police are still trawling through the rugged, mountainous terrain where the plane crashed to organise the retrieval of the bodies.
The recovery mission is expected to take up to three days, due to the difficult terrain.
“It’s very difficult for us to even walk in. The only route is by helicopter at this stage and we’re trying to work out a route so that we can get some vehicles in there,” Godbold said.
The RACQ CQ Rescue helicopter service wrote on social media on Monday morning that it was searching “for a Piper Cherokee aircraft reported missing late yesterday near Bloomsbury”.
“CQ Rescue searched the area last night after the aircraft, with a man and a woman on board, didn’t arrive at Lakeside Airfield,” it wrote.
“Concerned family members reported the plane missing and an aerial search by the Mackay and Townsville helicopters last night failed to find any sign of the aircraft.”
