Six people have died in a mysterious plane crash in Canada sparking an investigation into why the aircraft crashed in the remote mountains west of Calgary.
The aircraft took off from Springbank Airport Friday night with five passengers and a pilot aboard. It went down in the Alberta mountains Saturday morning, according to local police.
The plane was reported overdue by the Joint Strategic Rescue Coordination Center in Trenton, Ontario after failing to arrive in Salmon Arm, British Columbia on time.
The Center then reported this to the police at about 1am on Saturday.
A Royal Canadian Airforce Hercules plane was dispatched to look for the missing aircraft and it was discovered – crashed – on Mount Bogart about 37 miles west of Calgary – the largest city in Alberta.
Rescuers were able to locate the downed aircraft via its emergency locator transmitter which had been activated.
Alberta Parks Mountain Rescue and the crew of the Hercules aircraft confirmed that there were no survivors.
The crashed plane was a single-engine Piper PA-32, according to a spokesperson for the Transportation Safety Board. The TSB is investigating the cause of the crash.
The tragedy comes just weeks after another plane crash in Murrieta, California outside of Los Angeles which also killed all six people on board.
That crash involved a Cessna C550 business jet which appeared to miss the runway due to heavy fog in the area. The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating the incident.
Victims include pilots Riese Lenders, 25, and Manuel Vargas-Regalado of Temecula, as well as the latter’s wife Abigail Tellez-Vargas, 33.
Ibrahem Razick, 46, who goes by Abe, Alma Razick, 51, of Temecula and Lindsey Gleiche, 31, of Huntington Beach also died in the crash.
First responders arrived at the scene to find the plane completely engulfed in flames. It took firefighters over an hour to extinguish the blaze.
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