World News | Douglas C-54 Plane with 2 People on Board Crashes into River Outside Fairbanks, Alaska
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. A Douglas C-54 Skymaster airplane carrying two people crashed into the Tanana river near Fairbanks on Tuesday and burst into flames, authorities said. No survivors have been found.
Fairbanks (US), Apr 24 (AP) A Douglas C-54 Skymaster airplane carrying two people crashed into the Tanana river near Fairbanks on Tuesday and burst into flames, authorities said. No survivors have been found.
The plane took off in the morning from Fairbanks International Airport. It crashed about seven miles (11 kilometres) from there and "slid into a steep hill on the bank of the river where it caught fire," according to Alaska State Troopers.
Clint Johnson, chief of the National Transportation Safety Board's Alaska regional office, said it remained unclear what happened in the time between the takeoff and the crash but the tower operator "saw a large plume of smoke".
Michaela Matherne was flying from the village of Galena to Fairbanks to catch a flight to New Orleans when her small plane was diverted to verify the coordinates of the crash site.
"When we were in the air there was speculation that it was a cabin that caught fire, maybe a fish camp," she told The Associated Press via Facebook Messenger.
"We actually did not know what we were looking at until after we landed a few minutes later," she said. "We were shocked and saddened to hear that."
The C-54 is a military version of the Douglas DC-4, which was a World War II-era airplane. The website www.airlines.net said standard passenger seating for a DC-4 was 44 during its heyday, but most have been converted to freighters.
The Federal Aviation Administration described the plane as a Douglas C-54. Troopers identified it as a DC-4.
The NTSB was sending investigators to the site, Johnson said.
Further information, such as the flight's purpose and destination, was not immediately available. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)