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 Eight passengers and the pilot were killed when the aircraft, an
excursion flight booked via a cruise ship, went down during a tour
of the Misty Fjords area of southeast Alaska on Thursday afternoon,
flight operator Promech Air said.
A helicopter pilot spotted the wreckage against a granite rock face
about 800 feet (240 meters) above Ella Lake, according to an Alaska
State Trooper report.
The bodies were recovered by a team of eight crew members, four on
site and four as support, working for several hours and using two
helicopters and a seaplane, said Chris John of the Ketchikan
Volunteer Rescue Squad.
Crew members secured the wreckage of the float plane with cables,
brought out the bodies one by one and transferred them to a Coast
Guard cutter in a nearby bay, he said.
"It was quite an endeavor, but we got it done," John said. "For such
a sad thing like this, the operation went well."
The fuselage was intact but badly damaged, and all the victims were
inside the aircraft, he said.
Before leaving for the site on Friday morning, Jerry Kiffer,
president of the rescue squad, said the remote location of the crash
site, low visibility due to clouds and fog and the precarious
position of the plane had delayed the recovery effort.
Cruise operator Holland America Line said the DeHavilland DHC-3
Otter float plane crashed near Ella Lake, about 20 miles (30 km)
northeast of Ketchikan, a popular summertime cruise destination 230
miles (370 km) south of state capital Juneau.
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Federal investigators are in Ketchikan looking into what caused the
crash, National Transportation Safety Board officials said.
Conditions were overcast and rainy around the time of the crash, the
National Weather Service said.
The excursion flight was sold through Holland America Line, a unit
of Carnival Corp.
Promech's flights around Misty Fjords offer views of "towering
granite cliffs, 1,000-foot waterfalls, lush and remote valleys and
serene crystalline lakes," the company says.
"There is nothing I can say that can alleviate the pain and
overwhelming sense of loss," said Marcus Sessoms, president of
Promech Air.
(Reporting by Steve Quinn in Juneau; Writing and additional
reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Mohammad
Zargham)
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