Alaska: at least four dead after two sightseeing planes collide midair

Federal accident investigators are due to arrive in Alaska on Tuesday after at least four people were killed when two sightseeing airplanes carrying cruise ship tourists collided in midair during daylight, neara popular tourist town.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigators are traveling to Ketchikan, near where Monday afternoon’s crash happened, an NTSB official said.

The two float-planes went down over water about 25 to 30 miles northeast of Ketchikan, according to Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios of the US Coast Guard, and 10 other people were injured in the collision.

All 14 passengers on both planes were from the cruise ship Royal Princess, on a seven-day trip from Vancouver to Anchorage and operated by Princess Cruises.

The TV network NBC reported early on Tuesday that a fifth person had died and one remained missing, with one person was critical and three in a serious condition in hospital, citing medical staff.

The crash site, at Coon Cove about 300 miles south of the state capital, Juneau, lies near a tourist lodge that runs excursions to the nearby Misty Fjords national monument.

One of the aircraft was a De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver with five people aboard, and the other a De Havilland Otter DHC-3 carrying 11, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, Allen Kenitzer, said.

The Ketchikan-based operator of the larger plane, Taquan Air, said its pilot and nine passengers were rescued and were receiving medical attention, but one passenger’s fate was unknown. That group was returning from a flightseeing tour of Misty Fjords when the

crash occurred, Taquan said.

Neither of the single-engine planes was under air traffic control when they collided, Kenitzer said.

“We are devastated by today’s incident and our hearts go out to our passengers and their families,” Taquan said on Mondayin a statement.

Cindy Cicchetti, a passenger on the Royal Princess cruise ship, told the AP that the ship captain announced that two planes were in an accident on Monday. She said the ship is not leaving as scheduled and there weren’t any no details as to how the accident will affect the rest of the trip.