It’s interesting to me how slowly details about the plane crash in Alaska are trickling out. The crash happened yesterday (Monday) around 7pm local time. A rescue team, including a doctor with a satellite phone, arrived sometime last night and stabilized the survivors.
About 10am CDT this morning CNN started reporting that former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe was on board the plane. Shortly after that, reports started coming out that former Senator Ted Stevens was possibly on board. About 2pm we learned that Stevens had died.
A coworker and I speculated that they were just looking for O’Keefe’s body, because surely we’d know it by now if he was alive. About 3pm we finally learned that O’Keefe was alive. Initial reports seemed to indicate that he only had minor injuries, but around 10pm tonight they announced he was in critical condition.
I understand the remoteness of the crash site and the poor weather, and the fact that getting information to the media isn’t the first concern, but it still seems like information was trickling out awfully slow.
I would imagine surviving a plane crash is something that weighs heavily on one’s mind. Especially when someone else doesn’t make it. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy survived a plane crash in 1964, less than a year after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated.
The plane involved in this crash was a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter, an amphibious plane. They haven’t been produced since 1967. The US Army was once the largest operator of the Otter, having 184 of them.
After leaving NASA in 2005, Sean O’Keefe was the chancellor of LSU for three years. He is currently the CEO of EADS North America. A subsidiary of EADS North America, American Eurocopter, produces the UH-72 Lakota Light Utility Helicopter in Columbus, Mississippi for the US Army.
