POSTMORTEM examinations on the bodies of four people who were killed when a light aircraft crashed into the Wicklow mountains on Saturday are due to take place at Naas General Hospital today.
The remains of Sharif Booz, who was in his mid-50s, his wife Margaret O'Kennedy Booz, also in her 50s, their 14-year-old son Aymon Booz and his friend Charles Froud (14), were airlifted to the hospital after being removed from the wreckage on Sunday afternoon.
All the deceased were from Lower Almondsbury, Bristol in Britain. A remaining son, Sammi Booz (20), is an architecture student at Nottingham University.
Yesterday the aircraft was removed by an Air Corps helicopter in an operation organised by the Department of Transport's Air Accident Investigation Unit. The wreckage was taken to Gormanston in Co Meath where the unit will try to establish the cause of the accident.
Spokesman Jurgen Whyte said yesterday's operation took place "in difficult circumstances". It was "turbulent, very windy, and very cold", he said.
A garda has been appointed to liaise with the victims' families and has been in contact with police in Bristol.
Egyptian-born property developer Mr Booz was an experienced pilot and it is believed he and his family were travelling to visit his wife's relatives in Newbridge, Co Kildare during the October half-term school break.
His private aircraft left Gloucester airport shortly before 10am on Saturday for Kilrush airfield in Co Kildare. Weather conditions were not good. Mr Booz used Kilrush at least twice a year to visit Newbridge.
The alarm was raised on Saturday at 6pm when a relative of Mr Booz contacted the airfield.
Air traffic control in Dublin said that at 12.17pm on Saturday they connected Mr Booz to the Kilrush radio frequency and officially closed his flight plan.
The last radar sighting of the single engine plane was at 12.30pm when it was over the Wicklow mountains. It was then about 20 miles out from Kilrush, according to the Irish Aviation Authority.
Mr Booz's nephew, Yousef, a 26-year-old doctor based in Ireland, said his uncle was taking his family on a holiday to their second home at Newbridge, Co Kildare and were due to return to Bristol on Thursday.
"He usually calls us when he arrives there, we called him and we never got a call back," he said.
Mr Booz had been a pilot for many years and was a "lovely person who was well known in the community," he said.
Bristol-based writer and broadcaster Richard Hope Hawkins, a close friend of Mr Booz, described him yesterday as "a tough businessman, but very, very generous".
He had got to know him through property management. "He was one of the most hard-working men I had ever come across," he said.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's News At Oneyesterday, Hope Hawkins explained that Mr Booz had set up Miller House Management in Bristol in 1977, beginning with one property.
From that base he had built a substantial property portfolio "through sheer hard work", which he managed and let. "He loved working, he loved his family, he loved flying." He described Mr Booz as "a very, very experienced flyer".
He would ring him sometimes when he would reply "you've got me up in the clouds".
He described Margaret as "a wonderful mum to her two children. She supported him [Sharif] very much in the business . . . the tragedy is that Sammi is left to cope with this tragedy".
