Broken arm worst injury as trees cushion crashing plane

All three were out safely by mid-afternoon and taken to Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center, according to the state Department of Transportation. The National Transportation Safety Board said one person had a broken arm, another had a sprained ankle and the last had some cuts and bruises.

The plane, operated by Servant Air, took off from Runway 25 about 12:40 p.m. and crashed about 50 yards past Rezanoff Drive, which runs perpendicular to the runway, troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said.

"Upon takeoff, the plane hit the upper portion of some trees that were at the end of the runway," Peters said.

The aircraft ended up nose down on the ground in a stand of trees, the branches supporting the plane in a vertical position, DOT spokesman Roger Wetherell said.

The pilot was able to get out on his own power but the two passengers, who were conscious and alert, had to be extracted by crews on the ground, he said. It took state fire and rescue crews some time to get them out because the aircraft was not initially stable enough for the crews to enter, Wetherell said.

"The trees that it impacted initially certainly added to a lessening of impact," Mike McDonnell, assistant fire chief at the Coast Guard base in Kodiak, told radio station KMXT. "It's in my opinion that had he not hit the trees, and landed out on the highway 50 feet away, it would have been a much grimmer situation."

Alaska State Troopers identified the pilot as 37-year-old Kodiak resident Jason Lobo. The passengers were Zora Inga, 33, and her husband Martin Inga, 38, of Old Harbor, troopers said.

Officials dispatched a crane to the scene to remove the wreckage as accident investigators began trying to figure out what happened.

Federal Aviation Administration records indicate the plane is a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander built in 1967.

The aircraft was headed to Old Harbor when it crashed, according to the NTSB. Investigators were hoping to talk to the pilot today, said Clint Johnson, senior air safety investigator for the safety board.

Winds were gusty at the time of the crash but it wasn't clear whether they were a factor, he said.

It was the second time in just more than two years that a plane operated by Servant Air had crashed. On Jan. 5, 2008, a Servant-operated Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain crashed into the sea minutes after taking off from Kodiak, killing six people aboard.

The NTSB in that case determined that an improperly installed thumb latch on a luggage panel and a missing latch guard had allowed the door to swing open, sending the plane down. The agency faulted the company's maintenance personnel for failing to ensure the latch was properly installed, according to a probable-cause report.

Servant Air moves passengers and freight between communities on Kodiak Island. According to the FAA, it operates about a half dozen airplanes and got its airline certificate in 1998.

Men who answered the phone at Servant Air's offices in Anchorage and Kodiak said the company had no immediate comment on the crash.

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.