Authorities confirmed Wednesday morning that a tiny plane carrying three people crashed into the summit of a secluded mountain in southern Vermont.
A Piper PA-28 crashed at approximately 3:50 am close to the 3,000-foot summit of Equinox Mountain, just west of Manchester, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
At a press conference, Jamie Greene, the Manchester Fire Department’s first assistant chief, stated, “The snow helped cushion the fall.”
Greene added that this also made the rescue workers’ task of wading through “snow up to four feet deep” “extremely difficult.”
At 8:33 a.m., the pilot reported the incident to 911, stating that all three passengers sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The reason for the hours-long lag between the crash and the call to the police is still unknown.
Before first responders were able to locate the aircraft at approximately 10:16 a.m., local authorities requested more assistance from New York State Police.
A helicopter from the New York State Police was observed en route to the scene of the collision. The Manchester Public Safety Facility received all three of the passengers after a successful airlift.
After that, one traveler was brought to Albany Medical Center for additional assessment.
The New York and Vermont state police departments, together with at least six municipal organizations, collaborated on the rescue effort.
ATVs, snowmobiles, vehicles, and snowshoe-clad individuals were climbing the snow-covered mountain in the morning in an effort to reach the three stranded individuals, according to the Manchester Journal.
“They got to a point where they had to get off the main trail that goes up and around, and literally it was waist deep in snow so we had to revert back to snow shoes. It was very rugged terrain, but our guys pushed through,” Greene said.
Since an American Airlines aircraft crashed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter on January 29 while flying into Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., the United States has been dealing with almost daily aviation catastrophes and near-misses.
The horrific disaster claimed the lives of all 67 people on board, including Russian and American international figure skaters who were world champions.
At the same airport on Tuesday, another American Airlines aircraft nearly met the same end.
At 8:20 a.m., when the Boston Logan International jet was getting closer to the runway, the pilot noticed another aircraft getting ready to take off from the same location.
A FlightAware trace of the path of the Maryland-bound airliner shows that the crew quickly decided to loop around overhead to prevent another catastrophe.
The same day, an almost identical incident occurred at Midway International Airport in Chicago.
When a Southwest Boeing 737-8H4 spotted a private jet in its course, it had to swiftly cancel its landing.
The Southwest aircraft safely landed in Chicago following the incident, and no one was hurt.
Days before, at Arizona’s Marana Airport, two planes collided in midair last week, killing two people.
The two planes, a Cessna 172S and a Lancair 360 MK II, collided while ‘upwind of runway 12,’ one of the small regional airport’s two runways, according to the NTSB, which is looking into the crash.
Marana Regional Airport, outside Tucson, is classified as an uncontrolled airport by the FAA, which means it lacks an operational air traffic control tower.
