AP — A small plane carrying four people crashed Wednesday in shallow waters near a remote coastal town in Alaska, killing everyone on board, officials said. The Piper PA-24 was headed to the airport in the small town of Seldovia after taking off from Anchorage, according to a statement from the Alaska Department of Public Safety. Seldovia Airport is about 136 miles southwest of Anchorage. After crashing, it was submerged in about 15 feet of water in Seldovia Slough near the coast, said Clint Johnson, head of the Alaska region of the National Transportation Safety Board. The soldiers had to wait until the tide went out to get there. Police were able to remove the bodies of the four adults from the plane. They are being sent to the medical examiner’s office and their names will not be released until next of kin is notified, according to the Department of Public Safety. It was not immediately clear what may have caused the accident. The NTSB is investigating. U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said he will receive a report from the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration as they work to figure out what went wrong. “These tragedies are heartbreaking and unacceptable, which is why aviation safety and infrastructure in Alaska remains one of my top priorities,” he said in a Facebook post. Less than a week earlier, another plane crashed at a remote military site in western Alaska, killing all eight people on board. The plane had been approaching the second runway in dense fog and its pilots could not see the gravel runway, authorities said.
