Posted on 08/10/2010 4:00:01 AM PDT by tlb
JUNEAU, Alaska - Authorities said Tuesday that a plane believed to be carrying eight people has crashed in southwest Alaska.
Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes said the Guard was called to the area about 20 miles north of Dillingham at about 7 p.m. Monday after a passing aircraft saw the wreckage.
Hayes says there are possible fatalities. State and federal officials say severe weather has hampered the rescue operation.
Hayes says about five good Samaritans were on scene early Tuesday helping the crash victims. He says he was told by Alaska State Troopers that there were "eight or nine" people on board, though a spokeswoman for the troopers, Megan Peters, refused to comment.
The aircraft is a 1957 DeHavilland DHC-3 Otter registered to Anchorage-based communications company GCI, the Federal Aviation Administration told the Anchorage Daily News. A woman at the Regional Operations Center told The Associated Press all further information was pending notification of next of kin.
Dillingham is located in northern Bristol Bay, about 325 miles southwest of Anchorage.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was reportedly traveling to a GCI-owned lodge in the area and friends are concerned he may have been on the downed plane.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsminer.com ...
It was a trial run of the new Sharia Network endorsed by Obama I guess then.
Too ironic if DISH does this on a daily basis.
America this is the new programming schedule, get over it.
A tad ironic.
His first wife, Ann, was killed in a plane crash on Dec. 4,1978 at the Anchorage International Airport. Ted survived the carsh to live another day.
We call it Ted Stevens Airfield regardless what others say.
Ted Stevens was well liked by many and represented Alaska quite well.
I just saw your post. I didn’t mean to repeat the information.
Ironic though, isn’t it?
Cockpit Voice Recorder
A 1957?
these things, maintained properly, are capable of decades more than the 50+ years....
they are not like cars as maintenance is regulated to the max.
For as old as it is it looks fairly modern.
carsh = crash
My decaf coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.
Its a popular little business up here to strip old worthy aircraft down and modernize them.
I have a family owned business not far away that does that to Super Cubs.
Matter of fact I used to restore old Chevies as well, did a ‘56 Belaire once, had a late model Corvette motor in it and the latest in independent suspension and braking, had power rack and pinion and 4 wheel disc brakes. Solid as a tank.
For the good of my own soul, so am I.
I know, I’m not on all 8 cylinders myself yet, I fear the worst about this. Its just 4:35am here right now in Alaska.
‘Too ironic if DISH does this on a daily basis’
Ironic is right, wasn’t the aircraft being discussed leased/operated by a communications company, and here we are discussing our channel line-ups gone haywire.
I’ve flown on both the Otter and and it’s smaller cousin the beaver and they all still had the old radial engines. A good pilot could get either of those things in the air off a lake the size of a large mud puddle and they told me they preferred them over the newer turbo props even now.
I always felt safe flying in those, even if they were built back in the 50’s. The scariest ride I ever flew was in a Cessna off a smaller lake, it took about a mile to get the floats to break free from the water, way underpowered for the job IMHO.
right now we are working on 67 mustang and 72 Gran Torino and drive as everyday vehicles a 77 Aspen and an 80 Volare which we call the ‘Twins’....
GCI does a lot of cable up here in Alaska but apparently it was Dishnetwork that dropped a link to one of its birds and the west coast feed was rerouted from a middle east satellite I think, there is a forum somewhere that has all the dish geeks with the answers and speculations.
The last Otter I flew on was manufactured in 1951, I felt a lot safer flying in that than the modern Cessna they flew us back in.
And gagging fingers can be a REAL problem! LOL.
A friend and I chatted about this yesterday. He and his wife were in Atlanta for the weekend and he chatted about his flights. I pretty much said the exact thing you just said....I will never fly again unless I am stone-cold passed out. Thank God I live in DFW where I can drive to either side without much of a problem....
Wantto expand on that?
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