9 people die after skydiving plane bursts into flame, crashes on New Zealand’s South Island

New Zealand skydiving plane crashes; 9 die

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Nine people died when a light aircraft belonging to a skydiving company crashed and burst into flames Saturday near a popular tourist spot in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, police said.

The plane caught fire shortly after takeoff from an airstrip at Fox Glacier on the country’s South Island, said Ian Henderson, a spokesman for local ambulance services. The pilot and eight passengers were killed, Greymouth Police Senior Sgt. Allyson Ealam said.

Four tourists from Ireland, England, Germany and Australia, and five New Zealanders, including the pilot, were among the dead, police said. Next of kin were being contacted and the victims’ identities would not be released until Sunday, police said.

Police said the cause of the early-afternoon accident was not immediately known.

Witnesses told local media the plane had just lifted off from the small airstrip when it appeared to begin spiraling.

“It was like a fireball, and then there was big puffs of smoke going up. (The plane) was engulfed in flames immediately,” one witness, whose name was not given, told the New Zealand Herald.

New Zealand’s stuff.co.nz website said there is only one skydiving company operating out of the Fox Glacier airstrip, Skydive New Zealand, but a company spokeswoman reached by telephone refused to comment. An answering machine message at the company said skydiving had ceased for the day.

Police said the aircraft was a Fletcher fixed-wing plane of a type designed and built in New Zealand. The planes are popularly used for scenic flights and skydiving in the area around New Zealand’s Southern Alps.

Fox Glacier is on the western coast of the South Island, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) from the main city, Christchurch, which was hit early Saturday by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that damaged buildings and injured at least two people.