Police have pulled a large piece of wreckage from the water in Port Phillip Bay after a fatal plane crash that rocked Mount Martha last weekend.
Stephen Gale, 56, and James Rose, 30, died in the crash after their military-style jet collided with another off the shore of the Mornington Peninsula and plummeted into the water below on Sunday.
The owner of Jetworks Aviation, Mr Gale was a seasoned pilot who operated the joy flights out of Melbourne.
He is understood to have been working with Mr Rose, a celebrated cameraman had worked on TV shows like MasterChef, on a new program called ‘Any Fool Can Fly’ when the incident occurred.
Victoria Police performed a “complex recovery operation” to lift the four-metre wide fuselage out of the water with a crane and transport it on a barge to Port Melbourne.
“Any human remains, which are yet to be formally identified, will be recovered from the wreckage before the plane is further examined by the ATSB,” a Victoria Police spokesperson said.
Officers confirmed on Thursday that they had found human remains in the wreckage, believed to be Mr Gale and Mr Rose.
Mr Gale is understood to have been the mastermind behind the upcoming series, where celebrities were to be taught to fly planes.
One of the series most notable celebrity students, comedian and The Project panellist Tommy Little paid tribute to Mr Gale.
“This week I lost one of my closest mates, my mentor and my sidekick in the sky,” he wrote on Instagram.
“To put it bluntly Stephen Gale is the most intelligent man I’ve ever met in my life and our relationship was the perfect example of when opposites attract.”
Mr Rose, who had previously worked on hit shows including Master Chef, was remembered as a great family member and work mate, with his father describing the loss as “truly devastating”.
“I know that his story will soon pass and become old news like so many other stories, but I would like the world to know what a wonderful young man he was,” he said.
That investigation into the tragic accident is expected to take several months according to Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Angus Mitchell.
“We will go into great detail around maintenance records, pilot qualifications and past ‘sorties’ that have been conducted,” he told 3AW earlier this week.
“It’s not only detailing what’s occurred but it’s all the things that potentially failed … whether it’s mechanical or potentially human.”