10 Killed in Crash of Grand Canyon Tour Plane

A small plane on a sightseeing flight to the Grand Canyon crashed in a remote area near the Arizona-Nevada border on Friday, killing the pilot and nine passengers, authorities said.

A spokeswoman for the Mohave County sheriff’s office in Kingman, Ariz., said the twin-engine Cessna 402 from Adventure Airlines in Las Vegas crashed near an airstrip on the Hualapai Indian Reservation on the south shore of Lake Mead, 15 miles east of the small community of Meadview, Ariz.

“The sheriff’s deputies at the scene reported observing no survivors,” said Linda Phillips, the spokeswoman.

Officials in Las Vegas, where the flight originated, said the crash occurred about 2:15 p.m., shortly after taking off from Grand Canyon West Airport in Meadview.

Kay Scherer, a spokeswoman at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, said that Adventure Airlines flies tours of the Grand Canyon from Las Vegas. She said Adventure is a tenant of Scenic Airlines, a larger tour operator.

Scherer said the president of Adventure Airlines, its director of operations and its director of maintenance were en route to the crash site late Friday afternoon.

The crash Friday follows a string of accidents involving Grand Canyon sightseeing planes in recent years.

The worst such crash occurred in September, 1989, when a twin-engine plane loaded with sightseers crashed on a landing approach at an airport near Tusayan, Ariz. Eight passengers and two crewmen were killed, and 11 people were injured.

Times staff writer Ted Rohrlich contributed to this story.