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Plane Door Opened Before Crash

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By RACHEL D'ORO, The Associated Press

Published: January 7, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A chartered plane that crashed into a shallow harbor after taking off from Kodiak Island, killing six people, carried fishermen from a dissident sect of the Russian Orthodox Church home for Christmas.

Four people survived the crash Saturday. One of them told investigators Sunday that the door to a baggage compartment in the nose of the plane had popped open.

"We want to look at the aerodynamic qualities of opening a very large door in flight," said Clint Johnson, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. "This does not signal an end of our investigation of the crash by any means, but it at least played a part in it."

The Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain crashed about 50 yards off the end of a runway Saturday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB said.

The passengers were members of Alaska's community of Russian Orthodox Old Believers who had been fishing in Kodiak and were taking a short flight to Homer to celebrate Eastern Orthodox Christmas today.

Dean Andrew, pilot of a float plane that had been taxiing nearby, said he pulled the four survivors aboard. "Once I got them in they were really cold, and they were just pretty hysterical because they had told me that their family's in that plane," Andrew told the Anchorage Daily News.

Johnson said the survivor told investigators that as the Piper got airborne, the baggage door opened at the nose on the pilot's side.

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