Plane Bound for Grand Canyon Crashes; 7 Killed : Aviation: Pilot was ferrying six sightseers aboard the small craft, which hit a mesa outside the national park. Such flights have long been controversial.

By MAURA DOLAN

May 14, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER

A small sightseeing plane crashed just outside Grand Canyon National Park minutes after takeoff Monday, killing the pilot and six passengers.

Authorities said the Cessna 207, operated by Air Grand Canyon, crashed into a plateau and burned on National Forest Service land seven minutes after taking off from Grand Canyon National Park Airport at 1:20 p.m. local time.

A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said the cause of the crash was unknown. Representatives of the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to the scene Monday evening.

“We understand (the plane) is demolished,” said Tommy Aina, an FAA duty officer in Los Angeles.

Aircraft carrying sightseers over the Grand Canyon have long been a source of controversy for the National Park Service. A spokesman estimated there are about 100,000 sightseeing flights over the park every year.

“There have has been a series of air crashes over the canyon over several years,” said park spokesman R. Duncan Morrow by telephone from Washington. “Not all of them have been in the park, but it has been a matter of continuing concern.”

Morrow noted that the canyon creates peculiar updrafts and downdrafts that can make flying there “tricky.”

“Of course, a lot of people do want to see the canyon from the air so the temptation is to try to fly in conditions or circumstances that are not ideal . . . ,” Morrow said. “We still feel more needs to be done to ensure aircraft safety in the area.”

In June, 1986, a collision between a plane and a helicopter over the canyon killed 25 people and led to passage of a law in 1987 prohibiting aircraft from flying below the canyon rim and restricting planes to certain air route corridors.

Several accidents have occurred since the law was passed. A twin-engine plane loaded with sightseers crashed on approach to Grand Canyon Airport in September, 1989, killing eight passengers and two crewman and injuring 11 others.

The next month, a single-engine sightseeing plane made a forced landing in the canyon, injuring two tourists and the pilot. The plane had been outside approved flight corridors.

On April 14, 1990, a sightseeing plane that had just completed a tour of the canyon crashed a half-mile from the airport. All seven people aboard the plane were injured.

Morrow said Monday’s crash occured within the restricted route zones.

Until three years ago, environmentalists had pressed for a ban of air traffic in the park to protect visitors from noise. “But with 100,000 flights a year in the canyon, it was basically politically impossible to remove the planes completely,” said Rob Smith, southwest regional representative for the Sierra Club.

Smith said the Sierra Club wants the federal government to limit the number of aircraft allowed over the canyon and to increase the number of flight-free zones in the park. The Park Service is studying its air traffic plan for the Grand Canyon and will determine in the fall whether changes should be made.

“There has been a big improvement from three or four years ago, when you could literally take a helicopter down to the river level in the Grand Canyon . . . ,” Smith said. “But it still is not what it should be.”

He noted that the FAA has approved the Park Service’s restricted zone plan as safe.

“There have not been constant crashes,” he said, “but you have so many aircraft and these tricky navigation conditions. . . . Every year or two, there seems to be some accident up there.”

Bill Tribil, Coconino County’s chief sheriff’s deputy, said Monday’s crash occured about four miles south of the canyon rim in the Kaibab National Forest. A Park Service helicopter checking a reported forest fire in the area found the wreckage about 10 miles east of Grand Canyon Village. The plane and an acre of the forest land were on fire, Tribil said. Sheriff’s deputies confirmed the seven fatalities at the scene about an hour after the crash. None were immediately identified.