A pilot and a passenger are dead after the float plane they were in crashed in a harbor near Ketchikan, Alaska, on Monday, authorities said.

They were the only people on board the Taquan Beaver Floatplane when it crashed in Metlatkatla Harbor around 4 p.m., Ketchikan Gateway Borough officials said in a statement. Metlakatla is south of Ketchikan.

The circumstances of the crash and the identities of those killed were not immediately released by the borough.

A week ago, another Taquan Air float plane was involved in a deadly crash. A mid-air collision on May 13 killed six people near Ketchikan, in the far southeastern part of the state.

The planes were carrying passengers from a cruise ship, officials have said. The Taquan Air plane had 10 passengers and a pilot on board, and one passenger died, the company has said.

The other plane was a Mountain Air plane with five people aboard, including the pilot, officials have said.

Ten people were rescued after that collision. </s> KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Authorities say a pilot and a single passenger have died after a small plane crashed Monday near Ketchikan.

Ketchikan Gateway Borough spokeswoman Deanna Thomas says in a release that the Taquan Air operated Beaver floatplane crashed in Metlakatla Harbor around 4 p.m. No one besides the deceased was on board the aircraft.

Thomas says the names of the deceased won’t be released until their families have been notified.

She says the circumstances of the crash are not being released at this time.

Good Samaritans are towing the Beaver to the beach until it can be secured.

The accident comes a week after a Taquan Air Beaver floatplane collided with another floatplane in Ketchikan, which is about 14 miles (23 kilometres) from Metlakatla Harbor, leaving six people dead. </s> KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Authorities say the second Alaska floatplane crash in a week has killed two people in the same region where two floatplanes collided last week in an accident that left six people dead.

Ketchikan Gateway Borough spokeswoman Deanna Thomas said in a statement that the passenger and the pilot of a Beaver floatplane operated by Taquan Air crashed in Metlakatla Harbor Monday afternoon.

The accident followed the May 13 midair collision of a Taquan Air Beaver floatplane with another floatplane.

Thomas says the circumstances of the latest crash are not yet being made public. </s> KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Authorities say the second Alaska floatplane crash in a week has killed two people in the same region where two floatplanes collided last week in an accident that left six people dead.

Ketchikan Gateway Borough spokeswoman Deanna Thomas said in a statement that the passenger and the pilot of a Beaver floatplane operated by Taquan Air crashed in Metlakatla Harbor Monday afternoon.

The accident followed the May 13 midair collision of a Taquan Air Beaver floatplane with another floatplane.

Thomas says the circumstances of the latest crash are not yet being made public.

The victims in the latest crash were not identified because their families were being notified.

Thomas says the floatplane was being towed to land. </s> Two people were killed in a floatplane crash in Alaska Monday, officials said, the second fatal incident involving the same local airline in a week.

“A pilot and a single passenger are deceased after a Taquan Air Beaver Floatplane crashed in Metlatkatla Harbor” on Monday afternoon, Ketchikan Gateway Borough said in a statement.

“There were no other individuals on board the aircraft.”

The victims’ bodies have been recovered and taken to a nearby medical facility, while the plane was being towed to shore by volunteers, it added.

Last Tuesday, a Taquan Air floatplane crashed into another aircraft in mid-air killing six people, also near Ketchikan, in southeastern Alaska.

The Taquan Air plane last week was flying a shore excursion sold through a cruise line.

Ketchikan is a popular tourist spot on southern Alaskan cruise routes surrounded by fjords and dense forests.

Multiple tour companies offer rides through the area’s fjords, many of which include a water landing in a floatplane.

Neither the circumstances of the latest crash nor the names of the deceased have been released. </s> Two people were killed on Monday after a Taquan Air floatplane crashed off the coast of Ketchikan, Alaska – the regional airline’s second deadly accident within a week.

A pilot and a passenger aboard the single-propeller Beaver floatplane were both killed when it crashed into the Metlakatla Harbor at 4pm yesterday, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough said.

Neither of the two victims have been identified pending family notification, but officials say they were the only people on-board.

The cause and circumstances surrounding the crash remain under investigation, but the weather was clear and visibility was optimum, according to Jerry Kiffer, Incident Commander for Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad.

‘It was a typical Ketchikan day,’ Kiffer told the Juneau Empire. ‘It’s our understanding that the aircraft was landing in the harbor [before it crashed].’

Kiffer added that by the time rescue squad personnel arrived at the scene, the two people aboard the plane had already been removed and good Samaritans have secured the plane in the harbor.

This is the second Taquan Air Beaver floatplane to be involved in a deadly crash in the last seven days.

‘It’s unusual,’ Kiffer said. ‘We have had multiple fatal accidents before, but not in recent years. I don’t recall there being something within a week.’

On May 13, six people were killed and 10 others injured when a Taquan Air flight collided in mid-air with a Mountain Air plane 3,300 feet above the skies of Ketchikan.

Both of the aircrafts had been shepherding tourists from a cruise ship to the shore when the collision occurred.

Retired fisherman Chuck Hanas was out on his boat with his wife Colleen when they saw the violent crash and the planes fall into the water.

'It was just me. I was at the right place at the right time,' Hanas said to the Today show.

'I got in close and saw people bobbing all over the place. I didn’t know how many. And then they had seen me and one lady said "Help, Help!"' he added.

They called the Coast Guard after seeing the plane horrifically crash and fall in the George Inlet in southeast Alaska.

'It was shocking to see an airplane hit the water that hard and rip the floats off and turn upside down at the same time. I’m not sure anybody was even able to get out of there,' he said.

'I was kind of running on autopilot at that point. I didn’t really think anything other than I was just trying to get the people out of the water,' he added.

He said he saw an injured pilot with bloody lacerations to his face also scramble to get passengers to safety.

'He didn’t speak but he did shake my hand,' Hanas recalled on working together to pull the passengers out of the icy water before hypothermia set in.

Six people died in the collision including four Americans, a Canadian, and an Australian.

Among those victims was a newly married couple ready to start a family, a pilot who used his family's savings to buy his own plane, a devoted family man from Australia and an office manager at an insurance company.

There were a total of 14 passengers and two pilots on the two planes. The passengers were from the cruise ship Royal Princess that was on a seven-day trip in Alaska that offered the sea planes trip as an excursion off the port community of Ketchikan.

Alaska State Troopers identified the passengers who died as 46-year-old Louis Botha of San Diego, 56-year-old Simon Bodie from Tempe, New South Wales, Australia, 62-year-old Cassandra Webb from St. Louis, 39-year-old Ryan Wilk from Utah and 37-year-old Elsa Wilk of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. Also killed was the pilot of one of the planes, 46-year-old Randy Sullivan of Ketchikan.

Simon Bodie was the sole Australian on the sea plane. He was a 56-year-old businessman from Tempe, New South Wales and was described by Australian media as a 'devoted family man' with two kids.

Ryan and Elsa Wilk got married last year and they both worked in the tech center. They were planning to move from British Columbia to their new home in a Salt Lake City suburb with the hopes of starting a family.

Wilk, 39 and from Salt Lake City Utah, was a cybersecurity expert and a vice president for the Canadian firm NuData Security, a division of MasterCard.

'I can tell you my brother was an amazing man, son, husband, brother and uncle. We are completely devastated,' his sister, Shannon Wilk, told Salt Lake City television station KSL.

'Ryan was a very kind man with a fun personality. I loved how much we laughed together,' Daniela Veliz Llaguno, Wilk's first wife, told The Associated Press.

Elsa Wilk, 37 and from British Columbia, was a fierce black belt taekwondo competitor and worked as a marketing director for different tech companies in Vancouver. She traveled around the world to compete in the sport.

'Everyone knew them as a wonderful couple, they were totally in love,' their friend Mark Pashley said.

Elsa's brother Louis Botha of San Diego was also on board and died in the crash.

Pilot Randy Jason Sullivan, 46, was a father of two and been a pilot with mountain Air since 2012, flying tour groups over the rugged wilderness of Alaska's Inside Passage, a popular cruise ship route.

In an interview to the Los Angeles Times in 2015 he said he knows the perils of flying.

'The danger it’s on people’s minds. Always,' he said.

His wife Julie said she kissed him before each flight as a gesture of good luck and love.

The two accidents come as number of many others involving small planes in the US across recent months.

However aviation experts say they’re not surprised at the alarming frequency of which these crashes seem to be occurring, as the level of regulation applied to planes operated by private pilots or small companies can often lack the stringency adopted by large commercial airlines.

At the beginning of May two people were injured after a small plane crashed off the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

A week earlier, two people were killed when another small aircraft crashed as it set off from La Center, Washington. Their deaths followed two others’ who died in Madera, California, in another small plane crash.

‘Commercial planes are holding themselves out to be operating at the highest levels of safety,’ said National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia to the New York Times.

‘That’s not required of most others. And part of it has to do with the number of passengers.’

Taquan Air has not yet responded to a DailyMail.com request for comment. </s> Two people died Monday afternoon when the plane they were in crashed into Metlakatla Harbor, Alaska, a week after another deadly crash nearby involving the same operator.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough confirmed on its Facebook page that "a pilot and a single passenger" died in the crash of the de Havilland Beaver floatplane operated by Taquan Air, reports CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA-TV.

The names of the deceased were being withheld pending notification of their next of kin.

"Good Samaritans have the aircraft in tow and are bringing the Beaver to the beach until it can be secured," borough officials wrote.

Last week, a midair collision of sightseeing planes near Ketchikan left six people dead. The aircraft in that incident were operated by Taquan Air and Mountain Air Service.

A Taquan spokesperson referred all media queries Monday evening to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The agency told CBS News it "dispatched investigators from its Anchorage Regional Office to investigate. While owned by the same operator involved in the May 13, 2019, mid-air collision, this plane was not on sightseeing flight, it was a commuter flight. It is unusual for an operator to have two accidents in a short time but that alone does not infer there is a safety issue with the company, their pilots or type of aircraft."

Clint Johnson, the NTSB's Alaska chief, told KTVA the commuter flight was from Ketchikan to Metlakatla.

"There were a number of people that actually witnessed the accident, so our investigator is obviously going to be centering in on interviewing those witnesses when she arrives in on scene, hopefully early tomorrow morning," Johnson said.

Asked about the proximity of last week's crash and Monday's in both time and space, with Ketchikan and Metlakatla just 8 nautical miles apart, Johnson couldn't immediately recall any similar precedents for two fatal Alaska crashes involving the same carrier.

"Obviously it's a unique situation, and coming just on the heels of a major accident investigation," Johnson said. "However, I have to stress that each one of these accidents will be investigated to the detail that each one needs, but they are two separate accidents and that's the way that they'll be investigated: as separate accidents. We may draw parallels as we get into the analysis portion, but at this point keep in mind that we are just gathering information — just the factual information."

Taquan suspended scheduled flights on May 14 after the Ketchikan crash, according to its Facebook page, but resumed them along with flightseeing tours and chartered flights on May 17. </s> KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Five people are dead after two float planes collided in flight Monday afternoon near Ketchikan, Alaska, according to a news release from Princess Cruises.

The crash took place around 1 p.m. (5 p.m. ET) when a small floatplane — an aircraft with pontoons or floats that allow it to land on water — operated by Taquan Air was flying a shore excursion. The flight, sold through Princess Cruises, was returning from a tour of Alaska’s Misty Fjords and was carrying 10 passengers and a pilot.

The second plane involved was carrying four passengers from Royal Princess on an separate tour, the release said.

The four passengers on the Royal Princess plane and one pilot were confirmed dead, the release said.

Nine of the passengers on the Taquan Air plane were rescued and received medical attention with one passenger’s condition still unknown, the release said. The release did not say what happened to the pilot.

“We are deeply saddened to report this news and our thoughts and prayers are with those who lost their lives and the families of those impacted by today’s accident. Princess Cruises is extending its full support to traveling companions of the guests involved,” the company said. </s> Two people are dead after a float plane crashed in southeastern Alaska Monday afternoon.

The victims were a pilot and passenger on a Taquan Air Beaver floatplane, according to a statement from the Ketchikan Gateway Borough. A floatplane is an aircraft with pontoons or floats that allow it to land on water.

No one else was on the plane, the statement read. Local “good Samaritans and local emergency responders” were able to help with the wreckage before the Coast Guard arrived on scene.

The circumstances of the crash are not being released at this time, the borough said in a statement, and the names of the deceased will not be released until next of kin have been notified.

Taquan Air directed all inquiries about this incident to the National Transportation Safety Board. CNN has reached out to the NTSB.

Taquan Air also operated the Beaver floatplane that collided with another plane last week. A total of six people died in that crash, one on the Taquan plane and five on the other plane. That crash is under investigation by the NTSB.
Two people are killed, the pilot and the passenger, when a floatplane crashes into Metlakatla harbor near Ketchikan, Alaska. The pilot and passenger were the only people on board.