A MAIL plane flown by a highly experienced pilot and father-of-three young children crashed into the sea shortly after take-off from Sydney airport yesterday.

No Mayday call was issued.

Despite an extensive search involving eight helicopters, a naval mine sweeper and dozens of police, the body of the 43-year-old pilot had not been found last night.

Wreckage, including Express Post parcels, was found 8km off the coast.

The pilot, who also worked as a flying instructor, was 10 minutes into a flight from Sydney airport heading to Brisbane on a regular mail run when the crash occurred.

He has an eight-year-old son and twins, one boy and one girl, aged six. The man’s parents, en route to Sydney to visit their grandchildren for the school holidays, could not be immediately contacted.

Staff at Airtex Aviation, which owned the plane, were offered grief counselling. General manager Steve Donoghue said it was like losing a member of the family.

“I would sincerely like to pay tribute to one of the nicest guys I’ve met,” he said. “I had complete faith in his abilities as a pilot. He was well respected.”

Mr Donoghue said the fine conditions, with clear skies and no strong winds, made the accident even harder to understand.

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Peter Gibson, said it too could not understand what had gone wrong. He said thepilot had done an unscheduled “zigzag”, turning left, right and then left again about 18km from the airport, prompting Sydney’s air traffic control to question if everything was all right.

“They got no reply,” he said. “Shortly after that he disappeared off the radar screens.”

The plane, a 1987-built Fairchild Metroliner, is at a depth of 117m, too deep for police or navy divers to reach. Police will engage salvage experts to raise the aircraft.