Statement can be attributed to ATSB acting Chief Commissioner Colin McNamara:
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has commenced an investigation into Friday’s accident near Goolwa involving a Cessna 210 aircraft with three people on board.
This was a tragic day for three families, and the wider aviation community, and on behalf of the ATSB I express our deepest condolences to the families and friends who have lost loved ones.
Upon being notified of the accident the ATSB immediately began pulling together a team of investigators. This morning, we deployed 4 investigators from our Canberra office, who have specialist expertise as pilots, aircraft maintenance engineers and in human factors, to the scene.
They are expected in Goolwa later today, where there will begin examining the recovered aircraft wreckage.
Over coming days investigators will also interview witnesses and involved parties, and obtain any available flight track data and aircraft and maintenance records.
Any aircraft components of interest will also be recovered to our Canberra technical facilities for further examination.
Crucially, we are aware there are a number of video recordings of the accident sequence, some of which have been shown in media. That footage captured the aircraft rolling to the left in a very steep nose down trajectory a couple of hundred metres offshore.
Analysis of those video recordings will be instrumental to the investigation, and we do ask that anyone with video footage of the aircraft at any stage of its flight, and of the accident sequence, to make contact with the ATSB via the witness form on our website at their earliest opportunity.
Following the on-site phase, the ATSB expects to publish a preliminary report, which will detailing factual information about the circumstances of the accident, in about 8 weeks.
A final report detailing findings and the analysis to support those findings will then