Three people, including Swiss and Danish tourists, died when a seaplane crashed during take-off from an Australian tourist island, injuring three others.
Only one of the seven people aboard the Cessna 208 Caravan was rescued without injury after the crash on 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 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 a 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.
The three injured people were flown to a Perth hospital.
It is not clear which passenger was uninjured. Western Australian Police Commissioner Col Blanch said no survivor sustained life-threatening injuries.
Mr Cook said the cause of the crash was not yet known, adding 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.
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,” Mr 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.”
Mr Blanch said police divers had recovered the bodies on Tuesday night from a depth of eight metres. The wreckage of the plane was still being recovered.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), 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.
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,” Mr Albanese told ABC television. “My heart goes out to all those involved.”
