Rescue efforts are currently underway for an Air Tindi plane that crashed near the Diavik Diamond Mine on Wednesday, December 27th.
Around 11:45 on Wednesday morning, a small, privately chartered Air Tindi plane ended up crashing approximately 16 kilometeres away from the Diavik Diamond Mine, and around 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.
Ten passengers were on board, and though reports say that there are several injuries, including broken bones, there are no fatalities.
Helicopters were dispatched around 10:00am on Thursday morning to retrieve the passengers, and air Tindi President, Chris Reynolds, expects that they will be returned to Yellowknife later in the afternoon. Once everyone is safe, then an investigation will begin.
“We just want to get the crew and passengers back to Yellowknife safely, then we’ll dig hard into the accident in coordination with the Transportation Safety Board and other regulatory agencies and find out exactly what happened.”
Reynolds added that they are in constant communication with the Transportation Safety Board, and continue to work with them through the investigation.
The Media Relations Coordinator for the Transportation Safety Board, Hugo Fontaine, stated that they are simply gathering information at this time while they wait for the rescue operations to be completed. Once that is done, they will begin a proper investigation, and will provide more information as soon as it is available.
