Four survive icy plunge near Kodiak, Alaska

Chartered Piper had just taken off from airport

By KYLE HOPKINS and JAMES HALPIN
Daily News reporters

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A small plane that tried to turn back to the Kodiak airport just minutes after taking off for a short flight to Homer nose-dived into the harbor off the end of the runway Saturday afternoon, killing six people and injuring four, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.

Dean Andrew, a pilot in another aircraft who had been taxiing nearby, arrived in his floatplane just after the crash. He saw two people standing waist deep in water on the sunken fuselage and two others in the water nearby. He pulled all four aboard his plane.

"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 said.

Nine passengers and one pilot were on the Piper PA-31 Navajo Chieftain, operated by Servant Air, when it went into the water at 1:48 p.m. about 50 yards offshore, said NTSB investigator Clint Johnson.

Troopers identified the six people killed in the crash as: Pilot Robin R. Starrett, 50, Stefan F. Basargin, 36, Pavel F. Basargin, 30, Zahary F. Martushev, 25, Iosif F. Martushev, 15, and Andrian Reutov, 22.

Starrett lived in Kodiak, while the passengers are from Homer.

Acquaintances described the passengers as Russian Old Believers who fish in Kodiak and were headed to Homer on a charter flight to celebrate Russian Christmas -- which is Monday.

Randy Creamer is principal of the roughly 90-student Kachemak Selo school, which is near Homer and in one of three Old Believer villages in the area. Word of the crash quickly spread through the communities. Three of the passengers are former students, he said.

"It's going to be extremely tragic for this time of year," Creamer said. "That's a lot of people for a small area like this. There's a tremendous amount of families affected."

Five people died at the scene, and five were initially brought to Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center, said Providence spokesman John Callahan. One of them died while being treated there, and two were medevacked to Anchorage for further treatment, said Johnson, the NTSB investigator.

Of the two still in Kodiak, one was in good condition and one had been treated and released, Callahan said.

As of late Saturday, troopers had not released the names of the passengers who survived the crash.

Ted Panamarioff served as a spokesman for Servant Air on Saturday. He said the pilot, Starrett, was a former Coast Guard helicopter pilot.

"Very humble, very caring. Very detail oriented," Panamarioff said. "Very precise in the way he did things. He was an excellent family man. Excellent co-worker."

The chartered aircraft had taken off from the Kodiak airport just minutes before the crash and may have been experiencing mechanical problems that forced it to return, Johnson said.

Andrew, who owns Andrew Airways, a small air service, heard what was happening from his Beaver floatplane.

"While I was warming up and back taxiing, I heard Servant Air's Navajo taking off, and shortly after he took off, he said, 'I need to return to the airport.' "

"I know the pilot, and I could tell by the tone of this voice that it was probably something serious," Andrew said.

Andrew said he flew to the site of the crash and initially saw two people in the water. He brought them aboard and then picked up the two passengers standing on the fuselage.

Andrew could see the plane underwater, but no movement, as the Coast Guard approached. One passenger he took into his plane was bleeding badly from a head wound, he said.

"The wind was blowing so hard I was having to use power to maneuver the plane to keep the airplane over the fuselage. Then at that point the Coast Guard was really close to getting there."

A Coast Guard helicopter recovered another passenger, said chief petty officer Barry Lane. The downed double-engine 1979 plane was still being extricated from the water about 100 yards from runway 36 as an NTSB investigation got under way, said Johnson, who spoke while he was on his way to the scene.

The aircraft was in relatively shallow water and became visible later in the afternoon, when the tide went out, Kodiak harbormaster Marty Owen said. He wouldn't discuss the condition of the aircraft but said it was in "bad shape."

The Coast Guard reported clear skies and 20-knot winds at the time of the crash.

Panamarioff, the Servant Air spokesman, said charter flights to Homer are a routine trip for the company.

The crash is tragic, he said.

"We're a very small and a very close knit company, and everybody is very close friends, both professionally and personally," he said. "This was our first accident, and it's been very, very hard ... we're family."

Copyright 2008 Anchorage Daily News