Air Niugini Plane Crash Leaves 1 Person Dead, Officials Say

One person has been confirmed dead after a plane crashed into a Pacific lagoon in Micronesia, according to reports on Sept. 30.

Air Niugini, the airliner, said that all 47 passengers and crew members survived the incident on Sept. 28. Air Niugini chief executive Tahawar Durrani, however, later said that a man’s body was found by divers in the lagoon on Sept. 30, according to The Associated Press.

The man’s identity or nationality was not revealed.

“Our outreach team is in touch with the man’s family and we are making arrangements to repatriate his body,” Durrani said in a statement to AP.

Four passengers were hospitalized and are in stable condition at a Chuuk island hospital, AP noted. They will be taken to Guam for further treatment, Durrani said.

Navy Rescue

A U.S. Navy rescue team released video footage (as seen at the top of the article) of the rescue attempt after the plane crashed.

U.S. Navy sailors helped rescue people from a crashed plane in Micronesia, on Sept. 28, 2018. U.S. Navy/Lt. Zach Niezgodski /released

The plane “crashed approximately a quarter mile short of the runway, near where” Navy officials were carrying out operations, the Navy said in a statement.

They helped “local authorities by shuttling passengers and crew to shore using their inflatable boat prior to the plane sinking in approximately 100 feet of water,” according to the statement.

Sailors could be seen wading in waist-deep water inside the plane to search for survivors. “There’s a badly injured guy on the other side,” one man says in the video.

One of the men then warns the others that the plane could be soon filled with jet fuel.

“Careful because I don’t know how deep this is,” one man said as the camera pans around the half-sunken aircraft.

“They got everybody,” a man later said in the video.

The cause of the crash is not clear, AP reported.

Bill Jaynes, one of the passengers on the aircraft, told Sky News the plane came in very low when it landed.

He said: “I thought we landed hard. Until I looked over and saw a hole in the side of the plane and water was coming in.”

He added, “And I thought, well, this is not the way it’s supposed to happen.”

“I’m alive,” Jaynes also told USA Today. “That’s an extremely good thing.”

Another person said the plane overshot the runway.

“It was a little bit rainy, and there was some cloud cover, so the pilot unfortunately couldn’t see the landing strip. So he overflew the landing strip and we crashed into the water, about 150 meters (450 feet) away from the rocks towards the end of the strip,” said Victor Wasson, according to RadioNZ.

Louie Mallari, working at a hotel near the airport, told USA Today that he heard the crash. “As the plane approaches, the sound of the engine is getting stronger, then suddenly a splash of water,” he told USA Today.

The Aviation Safety Network said that 111 people have died in crashes of Papua New Guinea-registered airlines over the past two decades, Sky News reported.