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2 missing in crash of plane off Sand Point
Published: January 22nd, 2010 02:01 PM
Last Modified: January 22nd, 2010 02:02 PM
Rescuers are searching for two people after a twin-engine plane crashed last night while taking off from the Sand Point airport, the Coast Guard says.
The ACE Air Cargo flight was leaving Sand Point for Anchorage around midnight when people in the area saw it go down, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Sara Francis.
“They saw an orange flickering off the end of the runway,” Francis said.
Three Sand Point boats are searching the water, where debris was spread over 1,000 yards. Pieces of fuselage and a chair have been spotted between Egg and Little Egg islands, she said.
The Coast Guard identified the people onboard as Emily Lewis and Ameer Ali. As of about 9:15 a.m., they hadn’t been found.
“It’s like we lost a couple of family members today,” said Stewart Turner, a 23-year-old ACE pilot who sometimes flew with Ali.
Ali, 28, grew up in upstate New York and came to Alaska after serving as a flight mechanic in the Marines, said his younger brother, Shareif Ali.
“When he does something, he puts in like a 120 percent. That starts when he was in the Marines and afterwards when he was studying to become a pilot,” Shareif said.
Before flying for ACE, Ameer Ali was a well-liked flight instructor at Merrill Field-based Take Flight Alaska, said Camille Gates, office manager for the flight school.
When he started in 2007, he was working nights waiting tables at Orso’s restaurant, she said. “He always wanted to bring his mom here to live. He really, really loved it here.”
Ali has no wife or children, his brother said.
The age and hometown of Emily Lewis weren’t immediately available, the Coast Guard said.
Reached on his personal phone, Turner said Lewis recently moved to Alaska, followed by her fiance.
“One of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met right off the bat. Very sincere and genuine,” he said.
Lewis and her fiance planned to marry soon, Turner said. “Before they moved up here they were crop dusters. They flew small aircraft individually, single-seaters.”
Sand Point is on Popof Island, off the Alaska Peninsula, 570 miles from Anchorage, with a 4,000-foot runway.
The aircraft is a Beechcraft 1900 that would typically fly with a pilot and first officer, said Larry Lewis, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board in Anchorage.
“My understanding is this is a cargo flight and there were no other passengers than the crew,” he said.
Winds blew at gusts of up to 31 knots with low overcast conditions and good visibility around the time of the crash, Lewis said.
The Coast Guard sent a Jayhawk helicopter and a C-130 from Kodiak to aid in the search. The C-130 has left the area and the Jayhawk has been refueling in Sand Point, where a replacement crew will arrive to continue the search, Francis said.
“Our main focus is trying to find these two folks now who have been in the water for more than five hours, and that’s not good,” she said.
Turner, the ACE pilot and close friend of Ali, fears they didn’t make it.
“It doesn’t take long in that water to end a person’s life,” he said.
Employees at the ACE offices in Anchorage declined to comment.
Ali and Lewis were taking off in difficult conditions on the last leg of a long day, Turner said. He said the plane was carrying cargo and had plenty of fuel on board. He doesn’t know why the aircraft crashed but suspects a mechanical problem.
“For whatever reason the airplane could not climb,” Turner said.
