2012 De Havilland Dragon crash

The British De Havilland Dragon DH-84, registration VH-UXG, was one of only four Dragons still flying out of the 202 that were built. The vintage bi-plane had departed Monto, in Queensland, Australia, on 1 October 2012 during the Norra-Aus Fly-In airshow and was flying to Caboolture, also in Queensland. There was one pilot and five passengers on board. The aircraft never arrived at Caboolture. Reports say the the pilot was having some problems with the aircraft, and entered clouds, before contact with the pilot was lost. It was reported that the plane ran out of fuel after becoming lost in low and heavy rain clouds west of the Sunshine Coast late on Monday.
Pilot
The pilot, Des Porter (aged 68) survived a 1954 accident near Brisbane in the same model of plane. His father and an older brother died in that crash. He found a similar aeroplane some 50 years later in a hangar, disassembled, then restored it. The tail section of VH-UXG included parts from another aircraft, previously owned by his father, that was destroyed in an earlier 1952 non-fatal crash landing at Archerfield Aerodrome in Brisbane.
Search
The crash site was discovered on the third day of searching. Helicopters landed 200m away from the heavily forested and hilly site in the Lake Borumba area - about 25km west of Imbil. Rescuers looking for survivors described the area as a high impact crash site. All on board had been killed in the impact.
'Riama'
The aircraft, named 'Riama' after an Australian World War One pilot, had been rebuilt by aviation specialist Mothcair, and was based at Murwillumbah Airport in northern New South Wales. Mothcair had been looking for a buyer, and Des Porter became a sponsor. The cost has been said to be "a lot more than 100,000", which was a problem even for the owner of a successful mechanical business in Brisbane. "Like everyone else, Mothcair didn't know how much it would cost to rebuild a Dragon - no one had done it," Porter said in May 2012.<ref name="SCD" /> It was reconstructed by northern NSW vintage aviation specialists, Greg and Nick Challinor, who said the restoration, completed in 2002, took four years.

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