Sightseers, Pilot Die in Plane Crash

LAS VEGAS — A Grand Canyon sightseeing plane with three people aboard crashed on takeoff Monday at McCarran International Airport, killing the pilot and two European tourists.

Airport spokesman John Hanks said the twin-engine, nine-seat Cessna had just lifted off from the airport when it climbed to an altitude of about 150 feet, “made some kind of a turn” and crashed.

The plane belonged to Air Nevada, one of several Las Vegas-based companies that fly hundreds of thousands of visitors to the canyon each year. More than 80 people have died on canyon sightseeing flights since 1980.

Myron Caplan, president of Air Nevada, said the two passengers were Europeans but would not identify them.

He also withheld the name of the pilot, who he said had several thousand hours of flight experience and had been with the company more than two years.

It was the first accident in the history of Air Nevada, which carries about 90,000 Grand Canyon sightseers a year, Caplan said.

There was no preliminary indication of what went wrong, Caplan said. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were called in.