THE family of the pilot who crashed near Oxford believe he may have brought his plane down in Wytham Woods to avoid nearby houses.

Father-of-three Tom Miller, from Chipping Norton, was tonight still in a critical condition in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

Mr Miller was flying a Piper Seneca plane from Portsmouth to Oxford Airport when it crashed in freezing fog in Great Wood, west of Wytham, after sending a distress signal just after 5pm yesterday.

His wife Johanna said she believed her husband would have tried to have brought the plane down away from nearby houses and the busy A34.

Mrs Miller, 49, said: "I understand he was quite brave. He is a very skilful pilot and that would have been his utmost priority.

"He is doing fine, he's stable at the moment. He is sedated because they are having to do lots to him. It's still early days."

She said her children - Charlotte, 26, Sam, 23, and Anneka, 20 - were supporting her at their home in Folland Close. Mrs Miller added her husband, 52, had been a full-time pilot with Kidlington-based firm AirMed for about three years and had worked part-time for the company before that.

Mr Miller also previously owned Enstone Flying Club.

Two staff from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) in Hampshire spent today combing through the wreckage for clues about how the crash happened.

AAIB spokesman David Stewart said light aircraft such as the twin-engined PA34 Piper Seneca Mr Miller was flying did not usually have black boxes to help establish the cause of any accident. But he said: "They will be looking at all the evidence they can find amongst the wreckage.

"They will want to talk to the pilot if and when he recovers. They will want to look at the pilot's log and the conditions."

Mr Stewart added the team were likely to be on site for about a day and could take the wreckage back to their base in Farnborough for further tests before releasing a report on the crash in a few months' time.

A spokesman for Oxford University, which owns the woods, said the area would be sealed off over the weekend and refused to allow the media to access the site.

Emergency crews were called at 5.09pm on Wednesday after the plane sent a distress signal when it was about four miles away from the runway at Oxford Airport.

Initial attempts to locate the downed plane were hampered by low cloud cover.

A rescue team reached the plane in thick woodland about 8.30pm.

The emergency services set up an temporary base in the car park at the White Hart pub in Wytham.

A coastguard helicopter was scrambled from Lee-on-Solent in Hampshire and used onboard infrared camera systems to locate the crash site.

The helicopter, known as Rescue Whisky Bravo, took off at 6.30pm and located the wreckage at about 8.15pm.

It was sent at the request of the Aeronautical Rescue Coordination Centre in Kinloss, Scotland, after the police helicopter was grounded due to fog.

Watch officer Geoff Matthews, of Solent Coastguard, said: "This is a classic example of inter-agency cooperation at its best, the helicopter crew carried out their task in difficult conditions.

"The outcome could have been very different without their professionalism. Our thoughts are now for recovery of the pilot."