One person was killed and nine people are still missing after a float plane crashed in Washington state’s Puget Sound on Sunday, the US Coast Guard said. The agency said via Twitter that the plane was flying from Friday Harbor, a popular tourist destination in the San Juan Islands, to Renton, Washington. The Coast Guard previously said the plane was flying to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The crash, which was reported at 3:11 p.m. on Sunday occurred in Mutiny Bay, off Whidbey Island, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Seattle. The Coast Guard said one body had been recovered and nine people were still missing. The Coast Guard said four Coast Guard vessels, a rescue helicopter and an aircraft were involved in the search, along with first responders from area rescue and law enforcement agencies. The cause of the crash is unknown, authorities said. The Seattle Times reports that the National Transportation Safety Board says the plane was a De Havilland Canada DHC-3 turboprop. The aircraft is a single engine, propeller. Floatplanes, planes that have floats that allow them to land on water, are a common sight around Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. There are several daily flights between the Seattle area and the San Juan Islands, a picturesque archipelago northwest of Seattle that attracts tourists from all over the world. The aircraft, which also flies between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, often flies through Seattle and lands on a lake not far from the city’s iconic Space Needle. Renton, where authorities say the flight was headed Sunday, is at the southern end of Lake Washington, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Seattle. In May 2019, six people died in a mid-air collision between two Alaska sightseeing planes. Ketchikan-based floatplanes carrying passengers from the same cruise ship, the Royal Princess, were returning from tours of the Misty Fjords National Monument.
