Four people died Wednesday when a Piper PA-24 crashed into Seldovia Slough near Seldovia Airport, turning a routine flight into a recovery operation that stretched into the evening. Troopers said they were able to pull the bodies from the plane only after the tide fell and the aircraft could finally be reached.
Austin McDaniel said Alaska State Troopers had received the crash report at 1:18 p.m. and were on scene by about 4:30 p.m. The plane had gone into the water just after 1:15 p.m., and it was submerged in 13 to 17 feet of water near the Kenai Peninsula community of Seldovia, making immediate access impossible.
The flight was inbound from Merrill Field Airport in Anchorage, but the reason it ended in the slough remains unknown. People at the scene tried to reach the aircraft and rescue anyone inside, yet could not get to it before the bodies were later recovered. In a crash where time, tide and depth all worked against responders, the final answer now rests with the National Transportation Safety Board.
The State Medical Examiner Office will conduct an autopsy as the investigation continues. For Alaska, the hard part now is not the recovery but the cause, and that is the question investigators have only just begun to answer.
