The family, from Sydney’s west, were returning from Wagga Wagga at the time of the accident. A spokeswoman for the charter company, Clamback and Hennesy, said the father was an experienced pilot.

Bankstown airport is Sydney’s second-busiest after Kingsford Smith and is home to several flying schools, including Clamback and Hennesy and the AustralianFlying Training School, that was operating the Tobago involved in yesterday’s crash.

Death scene: Firemen inspect the wreckage of the plane lying in a factory carpark in western Sydney after the mid-air collisionPicture: Jeff Herbert; Photo: Photo

TWO light planes collided in mid-air above suburban Sydney yesterday, killing a family of four in one plane while the two people in the second escaped uninjured.

The two single-engine planes were coming in to land on parallel runways at Bankstown airport, in Sydney’s southwest, when they collided in fine weather at 3.26pm.

The pilot of the Piper Cherokee, his wife and their two teenage children were killed when the chartered plane crashed into a carpark after the collision.

The second plane, a Socata Tobago, radioed in a mayday call before making an emergency landing at the airport. The student pilot and his instructor walked away unscathed and were last night at Bankstown police station.

A police spokesman said the pair were giving statements but were not being charged. “They are very shaken,” he said.

The family, from Sydney’s west, were returning from Wagga Wagga at the time of the accident. A spokeswoman for the charter company, Clamback and Hennesy, said the father was an experienced pilot.

Their names had not been released last night.

The Piper missed nearby houses by about 100m, coming to rest next to a boat parked between two factories in Violet Street, Revesby. The plane did not explode.

One witness, Ken Holden, was filling his car with petrol when he heard a dull thud.

He looked up and saw the two planes heading in the same direction, debris falling to the ground.

The Piper rolled gently to the side and plunged into the carpark.

Mr Holden rushed to the scene, but it “was fairly obvious they were dead”.

“The person in the back seat, the head was hanging out, the arm, you could see it was crushed,” Mr Holden said. “There was blood everywhere. The pilot, his arm was hanging out, it looked almost severed.

“It was a shock, one moment they are up there and alive and the next moment they are on the ground dead.”

Investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau were travelling to the scene from Canberra late yesterday.

Conditions around the airport were fine and mostly clear when the accident occurred.

Bankstown airport is Sydney’s second-busiest after Kingsford Smith and is home to several flying schools, including Clamback and Hennesy and the AustralianFlying Training School, that was operating the Tobago involved in yesterday’s crash.

It is believed the Tobago was first registered in Australia in 1984, but was previously registered in France.