ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Low clouds and rugged mountain terrain complicated efforts Tuesday to reach the site of a fatal crash of a regional airliner in Alaska.
The Grant Aviation plane crashed Monday on a mountainside about 500 miles (805 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, killing the pilot.
The airplane carried priority mail but no passengers.
The low clouds and isolated rain showers delayed the search for the crash by the Coast Guard. A crewman lowered from a Coast Guard helicopter confirmed the pilot died in the crash, said Noreen Price, an aviation accident investigator who will lead the inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The NTSB was working with Alaska State Troopers to reach the site and recover the body.
A lack of aviation supplies in the area, the mountainside crash location and weather that often grounds flights will make reaching the scene difficult, Price said.
“It’s pretty typical that we can’t land at the scene, that we have to hike in to a location from a landing site,” Price said.
The name of the pilot has not been released. Messages left with Grant Aviation were not immediately returned.
The Cessna 208B left Port Heiden shortly after 1 p.m. for a flight to Perryville that was expected to take about an hour.
The Coast Guard soon received a signal from an emergency locator transmitter and sent a Jayhawk helicopter and C-130 airplane to investigate.
The Coast Guard found the wreckage four hours later at 3,000 feet on the west side of a mountain, Price said.
The crash site is 8 miles (13 kilometers) south of the village of Chignik Lake on the Alaska Peninsula, a long arm of land at the beginning of the Aleutian Islands.
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