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Report: Stevens Among Dead In Alaskan Plane Crash
JUNEAU, Alaska (CBS News) ― Former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens has died in a plane crash in southwestern Alaska, CBS affiliate KTVA in Anchorage has confirmed.
STILL CONFLICTING REPORTS ON DEATH OF TED STEVENS!LATEST NEWS:
Former Sen. Ted Stevens dies in plane crashKTUU TV, an Anchorage TV station, quotes Dave Dittman, a family friend and former aide, as saying fomer U.S. Senator Ted Stevens
was killed in a small plane crash in Alaska on Monday night. There has been no confirmation of the report.Reports from officials in Alaska were that nine people were aboard the aircraft and that “it appears that there are five fatalities,” NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz told The Associated Press in Washington.
The European aviation and defense giant EADS confirmed that former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe, now the company’s North American CEO, was aboard as well. His condition was unknown.
Military rescuers have arrived at the scene Tuesday morning, roughly 12 hours after the crash occurred.
Friends of Stevens told the Anchorage Daily News that he was traveling to a lodge owned by the Anchorage-based communications company, CGI, to which the plane was registered.
Steven and O’Keefe are longtime fishing buddies and the former senator had been planning a fishing trip near Dillingham, longtime friend William Canfield said. The flight in and out of Dillingham is an often perilous trip through the mountains even in good weather, Canfield said.
Stevens, 86, was one of two survivors in a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife, Ann, and several others.
Fishing friend and former NASA head O’Keefe was also on the plane. Sean O’Keefe is CEO of the North American EADS Corp. Vying for the KC-X tanker contract to be decided this fall.
Amid Annoncing Orders Boeing and EADS Snipe About KC-X
The two civil airliner giants both attended the Farnborough Air Show with Boeing (BA) conducting the first overseas flight of the new 787 and EADS sending an A380. Both companies announced substantial orders from a variety of airlines and leasing agents while also taking the time to criticize their opposition’s bids for the KC-X new Air Force aerial tanker.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
