Mr Lovatt's condition is 'serious but stable'

Steve Lovatt, from Nottingham, is being treated for head injuries at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor - his condition is described as serious but stable.

A team of air investigators will arrive in Snowdonia on Friday to try to find out why his light aircraft crash-landed.

National park wardens will help direct them to the spot on the Elidir Fawr mountain above the Ogwen and Nant Peris valleys where the two-seater plane came down.

The Piper Tomahawk plane crashed just after 1500 BST on Thursday.

First reports suggested Mr Lovatt - who was cut free from the wreckage of the cockpit in a three-hour operation - had escaped virtually unharmed.

A doctor who examined him at the scene said he was conscious.

He was stretchered down the mountain to a position from where he could be airlifted to hospital.

But doctors at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor showed concern about the nature of his head injuries, and he underwent a number of tests.

The pilot was airlifted to hospital

Reports suggest that he had to make a forced landing

Flight Lieutenant Kate Diacin, who piloted the Sea King rescue helicopter, said a rapid weather change could have caused the crash.

"He might have come into some bad weather - if the cloud base lowered quickly, he could have got disorientated and flown into cloud," she said.

"If he ended up anywhere near the mountains in cloud, he was very lucky to get away with it.

"There are hardly any flat areas to land a helicopter, let alone a light aircraft that needs a good 200m to run on."

There are not many plane crashes in Snowdonia - the Ogwen Valley mountain rescue team estimates such accidents happen about once every seven years.

He is being treated for head injuries at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor

But Roger Jones, one of the team leaders, believes that they could become more common.

"Small private flying is becoming more and more popular, so I presume the chances of incidents will increase," he said.

A major search got under way when the plane failed to turn up at Caernarfon Airport after taking off from Nottingham at 0915 BST on Thursday morning.

Ogwen Valley Mountain rescue team had 10 people, supported by Raf Valley 22 Squadron, searching a five mile radius of Bethesda.

It made a routine navigation call to Liverpool Airport Control 20 minutes later but then lost contact.

A group of mountain walkers had reported hearing an aircraft followed by a loud bang - it is not known if that noise was the crash or a fault on the plane which brought it down.