One year after his light plane crashed on landing at a Sunshine Coast airport, Ben Berg is yet to walk, the injured passengers are taking legal action against him and his insurance won't pay out.

Emergency services were three minutes away from amputating his legs in order to get him out of the wreckage and he was given nine pints of blood at the scene just to give him a chance of survival.

Mr Berg met the RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter team who helped save his life this week, despite the medical experts who treated him believing he would not survive in the days after the crash.

On August 12, 2017, Mr Berg took off from the Gold Coast with his wife and flew to the Sunshine Coast to meet one of his two daughters for breakfast.

He took his daughter (Micayla), her boyfriend and her boyfriend's sister for a joyride upon arriving on the Sunshine Coast and then took some other family friends up for another scenic flight.

As he was coming into land on the second flight, disaster struck.

Mr Berg said he cannot discuss what he believes went wrong that day because that will form part of the lawsuit, but the result of the failed landing at Caloundra Aerodrome was the aircraft flipping upon impact and Mr Berg being trapped in the cockpit, barely conscious with critical injuries.

Mr Berg does remember waking up trapped in the wreckage of his South African-designed Sling 4 piston-engine kit plane after hitting the ground.

"After the crash, I remember being inverted, in a lot of pain and bare wires hanging off the dashboard," he said.

"I also had chemicals burns and was soaked in fuel ... it was a miracle there were no sparks and fire.

"I broke my shoulder blade, my ribs were broken, I had gashes on my face ... I was a total mess.

"I asked the passenger in the co-pilot seat if he was all right but he didn't respond.

"I remember the sound of fire trucks and their equipment and then waking up in hospital."

Mr Berg was trapped in the wreckage of the aircraft for almost two hours. His passengers also suffered serious injuries as a result of the crash.

The RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter paramedic was going to make the decision to amputate both Mr Berg's legs in order to free him if the extraction had taken just three more minutes.

Mr Berg also went into cardiac arrest in the wreckage and required nine pints of blood while trapped just to stay alive.

Even after he was freed and arrived at the hospital, doctors did not believe he would survive.

"I was in the Intensive Care Unit for a week. The first three or four days they didn’t think I was going to make it," he said.

"Then they were concerned I might have brain damage due to the blood loss.

"Eventually they woke me up and I didn’t have a clue where I was, I felt like I had been abducted by aliens.

"I also couldn’t breathe with the ventilator they had put in because both of my lungs had collapsed ... I was just choking, it was just terrible."

After coming out of a coma, the next steps were for Mr Berg to eat solid food again and survive several surgeries to try to repair his crushed legs.

The leg surgeries were successful, skin grafts were used to cover the chemical burns on Mr Berg's arms and chest and plastic surgery repaired the gashes on his body.

One of Mr Berg's legs was two inches shorter than the other after the crash due to the crush injuries, he joked that doctors had better fix it or he would "keep walking around in circles".

One year on from the crash, Mr Berg can stand, but cannot walk due to the extreme pain he feels because the bones in his legs haven't healed properly yet.

"I can stand, but I can’t transfer my weight onto one leg to walk, so I need a wheelchair," he said.

"I should probably start with physiotherapy and proper rehabilitation, but I'm just lacking in motivation."

Mr Berg said his aircraft and public liability insurer has refused to pay out and he plans to take action against the company because he claims he has not been given a reason why they won't pay.

The pilot said the physical, financial and emotional challenges he faces are daunting and the legal action his injured passengers are taking against him over the crash has compounded the situation.

"I haven't been allowed to move on, I've replayed everything every day with the constant statements I've given," he said.

"Emotionally, getting through this has been tough. There has also been a severe impact on my family, my wife took a real beating.

"My family were sitting outside the airport fence waiting for me when they heard the ambulances, fire trucks and the helicopter landing.

"The police eventually came and told them what had happened, but on their way to the hospital one of the hospital staff rang and told them they didn't think I was going to make it.

"My daughter also said that one day as I came out of surgery, I made eye contact with her but didn't recognise her, I don't remember that due to the number of drugs I had been given.

On Friday, Mr Berg met the RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter team who helped to save his life.

"It was amazing to meet the people who saved my life, to see how they operate, look inside the helicopter and hear their sequence of events, their thoughts and how they coped," he said.

"The main thing was the mess I was in when they found me ... the crew said at the scene they didn’t think I was going to make it."

Looking ahead, Mr Berg hopes to walk again, get back to work using his electrical engineering qualifications and overcome the various legal and insurance issues he faces.

What the investigators concluded

According to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into the crash, as the light plane approached the runway, Mr Berg was turning left when the aircraft stalled and began rolling, causing the left wing to hit the ground and the rest of the plane came down soon after.

One of the main focuses of the investigation was the stability and weight of the aircraft.

"The pilot reported calculating the weight and balance of the aircraft prior to the flight using the aircraft electronic flight instrumentation system (EFIS) and using average weights for all occupants," the ATSB report said.

"He recalled the EFIS showing the aircraft weight and balance to be within the approved range."

Investigators' calculations showed the aircraft was just within the weight limit for the aircraft type, 920 kilograms, but the weight was unevenly distributed.

"The empty weight of the aircraft was 461kg. The weight of the front seat occupants was 190kg and the weight of the rear seat occupants was 175kg," the ATSB report said.

"The pilot estimated that at the time of take-off there was about 93kg of fuel on board and reported that no items were carried in the baggage compartment. The estimated take-off weight for the accident flight was 919kg.

"Using the weight of the front seat occupants from the accident flight and allowing for no fuel and no baggage, the ATSB calculated that the maximum weight able to be carried in the rear seats of VH-BEG, while remaining within the allowable centre of gravity range, was just 118kg.

"It was also found that when allowing for full fuel and any weight in the front two seats, the aircraft also required weight in the rear seats, or the baggage compartment, to ensure the centre of gravity was not located forward of the allowable range.

"The aircraft centre of gravity position was aft of the rear limit. During the approach, the aircraft stalled and entered an incipient spin at a height from which recovery was not possible and the aircraft collided with terrain."