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Alaska State Troopers on Tuesday identified the four men killed in Sunday’s crash of a Yute Commuter Service plane near the airport in St. Mary’s.
Pilot Scott Grillion of Chugiak, 44-year-old Benjamin Sweeney of Sterling, 23-year-old Mario Gioiello of Ohio and 25-year-old Caleb Swortzel of South Carolina died when the plane went down within a mile of the runway, troopers said.
Sunday’s crash was the third in Alaska over a three-day period that saw a total of seven aviation fatalities.
Grillion, 34, was the pilot, previously identified as an off-duty Yute Commuter Service employee, according to a company statement Monday. The others aboard the Cessna 207 were another Yute employee, a former employee, and a person on a personal trip.
A Yute representative did not respond to requests for more information Tuesday.
The group was going moose hunting in Southwest Alaska and left Bethel on the flight to St. Mary’s around 8:30 or 9 p.m. Sunday, according to information provided Monday by Clint Johnson, Alaska chief of the National Transportation Safety Board. Grillion got permission for special Visual Flight Rules clearance, Johnson has said. Such clearance can allow pilots to land in deteriorating weather conditions.
The plane crashed about a half-mile from the St. Mary’s runway just after 10 p.m., he said.
Troopers said they were contacted by the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center about an overdue aircraft near St. Mary’s around 11:15 p.m. Responding troopers went to the plane’s last known location and found the wreckage, they said.
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Two men died Friday in a crash on the Kenai Peninsula near Tustumena Lake. On Saturday, a 71-year-old Anchorage man died when his modified experimental plane crashed on a road near Wasilla.
More than a decade ago, four people died in a crash near St. Mary’s after a plane operated by Hageland Aviation flew into a ridge in bad weather. The November 2013 crash of the Cessna 208 killed four of the 10 people aboard, including the pilot and a 5-month-old boy.
A National Transportation Safety Board team flew into St. Mary’s on Tuesday and was expected to visit the site of the crash Wednesday, Johnson said.