Plane crash in Alaska kills 9, injures 1

Associated Press

DILLINGHAM, Alaska — Nine people were killed and one critically injured Wednesday morning when a PenAir commuter airliner crashed after taking off from the airport in Dillingham.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Alaska state troopers said the plane, a Cessna 208 Caravan, was bound for King Salmon, about 75 miles away, when it crashed almost immediately after taking off. Dillingham is on Bristol Bay, 330 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The plane, a single-engine aircraft that can carry up to 14 people, crashed into the tundra about two miles from the end of runway, said Richard Harding, vice president of operations for PenAir, Alaska’s biggest commuter airline. He said the plane had a pilot and nine passengers on board.

Hans Nicholson, subsistence coordinator for the Bristol Bay Native Association, saw the Cessna go down about a mile from his office.

The Cessna was flying low, as usual for commuter planes taking off from Dillingham. Suddenly the left wing dipped and the nose pointed up before the plane was "completely upside-down," Nicholson said.

The plane then nose-dived.

"It went vertical," Nicholson said. "It virtually quit flying and went straight down."

Most of the passengers were from south of the King Salmon area. The plane also was scheduled to go on to Chignik. Names of the victims were withheld pending notification of relatives.

At least eight of the nine passengers on board were connected to the native association, a community and social service agency serving 32 communities in the Bristol Bay area, including the Alaska Peninsula, said the association’s chief operating officer, Terry Hoefferle.

Hoefferle said four of the association’s 38 board members were on the flight. Three staffers, including the only survivor, were on board, as was an association home-care client, a senior citizen able to live in her home with help from the association.

All four board members were from villages on the Alaska Peninsula, Hoefferle said.

The association is the social service arm of Bristol Bay Native Corp., one of 13 regional corporations created in under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement.

The injured passenger, a woman, was in critical condition at Kanakanak Hospital in Dillingham, said spokesman Ralph Andrew.

Harding said there were no calls indicating the plane was in trouble. And he said there was no evidence the plane exploded.

"There was no explosion, no fire," he said.

The plane had no previous reports of trouble and it was fairly new, Harding said. Temperatures were in the low to mid-30s, skies were clear and no wind was reported, said trooper spokesman Greg Wilkinson.

The National Transportation Safety Board will send investigators to the site, said Scott Erickson in the Anchorage office.