{"id":471,"date":"2025-08-18T14:43:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T14:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/?p=471"},"modified":"2025-08-18T14:44:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T14:44:00","slug":"pilot-killed-in-light-plane-crash-near-wollongong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/?p=471","title":{"rendered":"Pilot killed in light plane crash near Wollongong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A father of two described as a family man and larrikin has been killed after his light plane encountered bad weather and crashed in bushland near Wollongong, south of Sydney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The body of Robert Greig, 57, was found in wreckage by a police team searching an escarpment near Austinmer, a coastal suburb in Wollongong’s north, about 8:00am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Greig, from the Wollongong suburb of Balgownie, was a member of the NSW Sport Aircraft Club and described by police as a “family man”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police said he had taken off from Wedderburn Airport for Albion Park, accompanied by another plane, before he encountered difficult weather on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The two aircraft were separated from one another and unfortunately Mr Greig’s aircraft came to the fateful end that we have before us today,” Superintendent Kyle Stewart said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“[His family] inform me that Mr Greig is a pilot of some four decades, having amassed many, many thousands of hours of flying experience.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NSW Sport Aircraft Club president Bret Cavanagh said members had been gathering at the airstrip after receiving the news this morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“They have lost a friend,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He was a larrikin. He was a character and a fun fella to be around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My telephone and the club’s telephones have rung off the hook this morning with members trying to find out how one of their brothers is.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discovery of the wreckage followed a widespread search after residents reported seeing a plane and later hearing a loud bang between Sublime Point and Bulli Tops about 7:45pm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Superintendent Stewart said the aircraft was in complete wreckage when it was found in steep bushland beneath the rocky escarpment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“It is effectively what is a home-built type aircraft and it was an aircraft that was painted in camouflage colours which caused a little bit of a complication for us in our searches last night,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Really quite fortunately we had a large number of people from the community who rang us and were able to give us a lot of indications as to where they heard and saw things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We were also able to use a mobile phone that Mr Greig had in his possession to locate an area in which we needed to look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Police crews on the ground this morning were able to go straight to that location and in a very short period of time discover what they did.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Superintendent Stewart said police would investigate the cause of the crash, and were examining as much of the wreckage as possible before moving it to another location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s really quite a wooded and slippery area, it will be quite a difficult examination for us to undertake and quite a difficult task for us to retrieve Mr Greig and his aircraft,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A father of two described as a family man and larrikin has been killed after his light plane encountered bad weather and crashed in bushland near Wollongong, south of Sydney. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.landingliker.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}