Crash with a seaplane near the forests and sheer cliffs of Kechikan
Six people died yesterday in a seaplane crash that crashed in southeastern Alaska. This was announced in a statement by the US Coast Guard, AFP reported, which was referred to by BTA.
Rescuers were alerted around 11:20 a.m. local time (7:20 p.m. GMT) by an emergency beacon signal. More than two hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter found the fallen machine. Two specially trained swimmers went down, but did not find a single survivor.
The seaplane with five passengers on board and one pilot took off from the park known as the Misty Fjords National Monument. The passengers were tourists who arrived on a cruise ship, according to the operator “Netherlands America Line”, specifying that the dead were on a solo trip, not provided by the company.
Numerous tourist companies offer excursions through the fjords around the city of Kechikan, surrounded by lush forests and almost vertical rocky slopes. Most such excursions involve landing on a seaplane, and there have been accidents in the region in recent years.
In May 2019, for example, six people died in a collision between two seaplanes with tourists traveling on a cruise ship.
In 2015, a plane crashed into a granite rock near a local lake; there were nine victims, AFP recalls.
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