Four Brits among six victims in Quebec plane crash as probe continues

LES BERGERONNES, Qc – Britain’s Foreign Office says four Britons were among six people killed when a sightseeing seaplane crashed in a remote area of Quebec’s North Shore on Sunday.

The ministry did not name the victims of the crash, which took place in a wooded area near the community of Les Bergeronnes, about 250 kilometres northeast of Quebec City

The Foreign Office said Tuesday that British officials were in contact with Canadian authorities.

The Air Saguenay plane was taking part in a routine sightseeing flight from Lac Long in Tadoussac when it went down, killing everyone on board.

The airline’s vice-president said the flight was only supposed to last 20 minutes and weather conditions appeared to have been “perfect” at the time.

Jean Tremblay also said the pilot had more than 6,000 hours of flying experience, all of them with Air Saguenay, where he had worked for 14 years.

The bodies of all six people killed in the crash have been found and handed over to the coroner’s office.

The Transportation Safety Board has sent a team of investigators to the crash site and the provincial police say they are continuing their own investigation to determine if a criminal element caused the crash.

Jean-Marc Ledoux, a regional spokesman for the TSB, says they hope to establish the exact circumstances of the crash in the coming days.

The plane appears to have been in good working order despite being built in the 1950s.

Ledoux says they hope to move the wreckage to investigate further, but that will be a delicate operation as it crashed in a wooded area against a mountainside.

There was no flight recorder inside the seaplane, but it is not necessary to have a black box for this type of aircraft, Ledoux said.

— with files from the Associated Press.