Crash agents will hear tragic trainee pilot's voice

Accident investigators are to listen to voice recordings between a Scottish trainee pilot and air traffic controllers as they attempt to pinpoint what caused her single-engine aircraft to plummet into a Florida swamp.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board want to know whether Carly Beattie's radio communications and last words to federal aviation authorities may shed any light on last Thursday's crash, which killed the 21-year-old student from Penicuik, Midlothian, and her brother Daniel, 24.

The pair had been taking a pleasure flight in the two-seater Cessna 152 when it apparently nosedived into a remote area between Blue Cypress Lake and Yeehaw Junction, in Florida.

Keith Holloway, spokesman for the NTSB, said yesterday: "Our team has completed their on-scene investigation and documented the damages. They have also requested air traffic control communications and are in the process of writing their preliminary report."

The wreckage is being removed to a facility in Atlanta for further examination.

"We look at everything. We want to find out whether it was mechanical error, mechanical failure, human performance," said Mr Holloway.

It was the second accident in ten months involving an aircraft chartered from Space Coast Aviation, a flying club and school on Merritt Island, Florida.

Ms Beattie, a former pupil of St George's School in Edinburgh, had been in Florida as part of her degree course in Air Transport with Commercial Pilot Training at Buckinghamshire New University. Her parents Thomas, 54, and Elaine, 52, had been visiting her with their son.

Search and rescue teams waded through waist-high swamp to reach the wreck but found both Carly and her brother dead at the scene.