A Fiji Air Islander plane crashed near Bua and a story published in The Fiji Times on July 16, 1979 stated nine lives were lost in the tragedy.
The bodies of the nine Fiji Air crash victims were recovered on July 15 from the jungle and the Bua hillside where their plane plunged to destruction.
Minister for Civil Aviation then, Tomasi Vakatora, was going to make a statement about the incident in the House of Representatives that week.
It was reported that a senior New Zealand air accident investigator, John Leech, 54, had arrived and was expected to fly to Bua to look at the wreckage.
He had been sent to Fiji by the Ministry of Transport in Wellington because as an outsider he would be impartial, the Director of Civil Aviation, Mike Varley said.
He added: “The main object of the investigation is not to lay blame or place responsibility on anybody. “It is to find out the cause of the accident so that any future accident of a similar nature can be avoided.”
The wreckage of the Islander aircraft was found by village trackers about 10 miles away from the Bua airstrip after two days of air and ground searches.
Parts such as a propeller, an engine and a wheel had broken off from the twisted fuselage amid trees near the top of a gully bisecting hills rising to 1500 to 2000ft (500 to 650 metres).
But the plane had not caught fire. Two of the bodies were trapped inside the plane and others were scattered around it.
The plane had come down in an area where a Narowai farmer, Waisale Damu, said he heard the sound of a crash about the time it was due to land.
Bua Secondary School teacher saw smoke and her husband drove to the airstrip to notify searchers there.
A helicopter carrying the Commissioner of Police, John Orme, and later Santok Singh from Labasa, and Northern Division police commander Superintendent S.K. Mishra also went to the site and confirmed there were no survivors.
The wreckage remained under round-the-clock guard by police and villagers.
Mr Varley said it was virtually impossible to see the jungle-shrouded wreckage from the air.
“You’d have to have wonderful eyesight to spot it,” he said.
The bodies of six of the victims were flown back to Suva.
These included pilot, Garry Cope, 24, from Melbourne, whose father Ansett Airlines Captain, Max Cope, was waiting in Suva, and young New Zealand honeymooners John and Sandy Stevenson from Gisborne. Others flown back were Ruth Manulevu, 5, and Mary Ah Tong, 42, of Lami, and father of 12 children Esala Deli of Suva.
The father and brothers of William Peckham, 26, and his sister Elizabeth Peckham, 30, asked that their bodies remain on Vanua Levu for burial.
The body of Aritema Warua, of Macuata, was also kept back.
The minister’s statement in Parliament was expected to be a full account of the circumstances of the crash and the search action taken after the plane failed to land in Bua.
The accident inspector, Mr Leech, served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force from 1922 to 1942, retired as the National Airways Corporation’s senior Wellington pilot in 1975 and had been safety officer and technical director of the New Zealand Airline Pilot’s Association.
He was a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Aerospace Safety Division.
Mr Varley said Mr Leech would inspect the wreckage, take statements from people involved and possibly seek help in checking the aircraft and its engines for airworthiness.
He would then report to the Fiji Civil Aviation Department and the minister.
