MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A seaplane crashed during takeoff from an Australian tourist island, killing three people including Swiss and Danish tourists and injuring three others.
Only one of the seven people aboard the Cessna 208 Caravan was rescued without injury after the crash Tuesday afternoon on Rottnest Island, police said.
The plane owned by Swan River Seaplanes was returning to its base in Perth, the Western Australia state capital 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Rottnest Island, which is also known by its Indigenous name Wadjemup.
The dead were a 65-year-old Swiss woman, a 60-year-old man from Denmark and the 34-year-old male pilot from Perth, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook said.
The dead tourists’ partners, a 63-year-old Swiss man and a 58-year-old Danish woman, survived. A Western Australian couple, a woman aged 65 and a 63-year-old man, also survived.
It is not clear which passenger was uninjured. Western Australian Police Commissioner Col Blanch said no survivor sustained life-threatening injuries.
The three injured people were flown to a Perth hospital.
Cook said the cause of the crash was not yet known. Reports that the plane had struck a rock at the entrance of a bay on the west side of the island could not be confirmed from video viewed so far, Cook said.
Rottnest Island is renowned for its sandy beaches and cat-sized hopping marsupials called quokkas which are rare on the Australian mainland. The island’s tourist accommodation is fully booked during the current Southern Hemisphere summer months.
“Every Western Australian knows that Rottnest is our premier tourism destination,” Cook told reporters.
“For something so tragic to happen in front of so many people, at a place that provides so much joy, especially at this time of the year, is deeply upsetting,” Cook added.
Blanch said police divers had recovered the bodies on Tuesday night from a depth of 8 meters (26 feet). Wreckage of the plane was still being recovered.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the aviation crash investigator, said specialist investigators were being sent to the scene.
“As reported to the ATSB, during take-off the floatplane collided with the water, before coming to rest partially submerged,” the bureau’s chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said in a statement.
Greg Quin, a tourist who was vacationing on Rottnest, said he saw the plane crash.
“We were watching the seaplane take off and just as it was beginning to get off the water, it just tipped over and it crashed,” Quin told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in Perth.
“A lot of people in the water on their boats rushed to the scene and I think got there really, really quickly,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the crash as “terrible news.”
“The pictures would have been seen by all Australians as they woke up this morning,” Albanese told ABC television. “My heart goes out to all those involved.”
