A recovery team will attempt to reach the wreckage of a sightseeing plane Friday to begin the grim task of removing the bodies of the pilot and eight passengers from a Seattle-based cruise ship.
A recovery team will attempt to reach the wreckage of a sightseeing plane Friday to begin the grim task of removing the bodies of the pilot and eight passengers from a Seattle-based cruise ship.
The DeHavilland DHC-3 Otter float plane crashed Thursday around 2 p.m., approximately 800 feet above a lake in the Misty Fjords area, about 25 miles northeast of Ketchikan, killing all aboard. The eight passengers were from a Holland America Line cruise ship that departed from Seattle last Saturday, the cruise line said.
Holland America Line said Friday none of the passengers were from Washington state.
The names of the passengers aboard the plane and their hometowns will not be released until next of kin of all of the victims are notified, a Holland America Line spokeswoman said Friday morning. Megan Peters of the Alaska State Patrol said Friday that officials are in the process of notifying relatives.
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Clint Johnson, head of the Alaska office of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said weather prevented the recovery of bodies on Thursday.
Jerry Kiffer, president of the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad, said the wreckage is on a 60-degree slope at the base of a cliff, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.
“It’s kind of hanging on the side of the mountain,” Kiffer told the newspaper. “The floats, of course, are broken off and it’s actually (lying) on top of the floats with the tail hanging out over about a 30-or-so-foot drop.”
Recovery teams will likely have to use rope to steady the plane before their efforts move forward, the newspaper reported.
“We’ll have to do some stabilization and get the aircraft safe to get inside before we start moving the victims,” Kiffer said.
Members of the rescue squad located the wreckage Thursday and confirmed all aboard had been killed.
The passengers were sailing on the cruise ship Westerdam.
“We are incredibly distressed by this situation,” Holland America Line said in a statement. “Holland America Line is extending its full support to traveling companions of the guests involved.”
Passengers on the ship said that the companions of the crash victims disembarked after the report of the crash Thursday.
The weather near Misty Fjords Thursday afternoon was rainy, with southwest winds of 10 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
The NTSB said it was sending a team from its Alaska regional office to investigate the incident.
The floatplane was owned by Promech Air, the largest air taxi in southeast Alaska, the company says on its website. Promech has operated in the area for 30 years.
“There is nothing I can say that can alleviate the pain and overwhelming sense of loss that we and the loved ones of those affected are feeling,” Promech Air President Marcus Sessoms said. “At this moment, all of us share the pain and anguish of this terrible event. Our thoughts and our prayers go out to everyone touched by this tragedy.”
The “Magnificent Misty Fjords by Floatplane” tour is one of several tours offered by the company, according to its website. The two-hour trip, priced at $229 per person, includes a 10-minute landing on a lake or fjord.
In 2013, four people were injured in a Promech Air floatplane crash on Prince of Wales Island, the Alaska Dispatch News reported.
The de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, which was only manufactured from 1951 to 1967, is prized by Bush pilots in Alaska who consider it a powerful and reliable workhorse, pilot Doug Glenn of Alaska’s Glenn Air was quoted as saying in this 2013 story in The Seattle Times.
At that time, there had been 54 crashes of de Havilland Otter planes in Alaska since 1967, according to an NTSB database. Eight of those crashes — including the 2010 crash in Aleknagik that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens and four other people — were fatal.
Ten people were killed in July 2013 in the fiery crash of a de Havilland DHC3-T Otter just feet from the runway at the Soldotna Municipal Airport.
In 2001, a plane carrying 19 people, including 16 University of Washington alumni football fans who had been on Holland America’s “Tailgate at Sea” cruise , were on a shore excursion when the aircraft crashed in Mexico.
Families of victims sued the cruise line, and in 2005, 14 of them settled out of court with the company for an undisclosed amount.
Documents, including internal company memos, supported the plaintiffs’ contention that the cruise giant was aware of the tour’s troubled history and had received numerous complaints about the safety of previous flights.
Among the complaints was a 1996 incident in which the door of the plane flew off in midflight with Holland America passengers aboard the Chichen Itza excursion. No injuries were reported.