Clint Johnson, the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska Regional Chief, said Tuesday that his agency has a hangar in Juneau ready to receive the wreckage of the Piper Comanche that crashed at Glacier Point Saturday.
The plane wasn’t insured, so it falls on the family of pilot David Kunat to transport it to Juneau, Johnson said.
The agency responsible for investigating the cause of the crash hopes to get the plane on a barge and to the hangar so they can begin reconstructing it within the week, Johnson said.
“Putting it back together doesn’t take that long. Maybe an hour or so,” Johnson said. “Ultimately what we’re going to be doing is documenting the wreckage to the very best of our ability. At this point, probably most importantly, we’re in the informative stages. Our goal is to find out what happened and to make recommendations so it does not happen again.”
There is a “certain amount of urgency,” Johnson said, to get the plane out of the water and to Juneau because of the degrading effects of saltwater.
NTSB’s Andrew Swick has spoken to witnesses and will lead the investigation.
Representatives from the airplane’s manufacturer, Piper Aircraft, and the engine manufacturer, Lycoming, will assist Swick in the investigation.
A preliminary accident report will be available at http://www.ntsb.gov by the end of the week or early next week, Johnson said.
Early reports of the crash said the plane had taken off from a gravel airstrip at Glacier Point, but eyewitnesses said the plane had arrived from the south and that it appeared to overfly the airstrip before turning and crashing.