The agency said in a news release that the plane was flying from Friday Harbor, a popular tourist destination in the San Juan Islands, to Renton, a southern suburb of Seattle. Four Coast Guard vessels, a rescue helicopter and an aircraft were involved in the extensive search, along with nearby rescue and law enforcement agencies. The crash was reported at 3:11 p.m. The Coast Guard said one body had been recovered and nine people were still missing around 9 p.m. The cause of the crash is unknown, authorities said. The plane crashed in Mutiny Bay off Whidbey Island, about 50 kilometers northwest of downtown Seattle and about halfway between Friday Harbor and Renton. The National Transportation Safety Board said the plane was a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, a single-engine propeller plane. Floatplanes, which 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. These aircraft, which also fly between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, often fly over Seattle and land on Lake Washington, 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 2019, a plane crash in Alaska between two sightseeing planes killed six people. The Ketchikan-based floatplanes were carrying passengers from the same cruise ship, the Royal Princess, returning from tours of the Misty Fjords National Monument.
