Floatplane carrying sightseers crashes into remote Alaska cliff, killing nine

Source: Washington Post

On a remote part of the southeastern Alaskan coastline, amid a landscape of sheer cliffs and snaking inlets that could easily be the setting for a Tolkien novel, a sightseeing floatplane crashed into a granite rock face Thursday, killing all nine people on board.

The bodies of the nine dead remained at the crash site overnight as rain and wind battered the remote and gloomy expanse of rock, inhibiting the recovery effort, according to Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Megan Peters. It was the state’s deadliest airplane crash since 2013.

Officials have not identified the aircraft’s pilot and eight passengers, all tourists on a week-long Holland America cruise that left Seattle on Saturday. They had boarded the plane — a small, single-engine craft equipped with slender floats that allow it to land on water — earlier that day for a tour of Alaska’s Misty Fjords National Monument.

Their ship, the Westerdam, was docked in the tiny nearby city of Ketchikan and due to depart an hour before the plane was reported missing. But it remained in port as of Thursday evening, according to the Associated Press, sitting 20 miles from the crash site amid gray waters and overcast skies.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/26/float-plane-crashes-into-remote-alaska-cliff-killing-nine-sightseers/