Three people aboard a small plane survived after their aircraft slammed into the side of one of the highest mountains in Vermont, officials reported.
A Piper PA-28, carrying the three flyers, crashed into Mount Equinox, the highest peak in the Taconic range, in Manchester, around 3:50 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Manchester authorities received reports of the crash about five hours later. The survivors, who have not yet been identified, were rescued two hours after that.
All three are suffering non-life-threatening injuries. One patient was transported to an area hospital for further evaluation, Jamie Greene, first assistant chief of the Manchester Fire Department, said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
Rescuers trekked through “extremely difficult conditions,” including four feet of snow in “rugged terrain” near the top of the mountain, Greene said.
They located the crash site around 10:15 a.m. The New York State Police aviation team airlifted the victims and transported them to the Manchester Public Safety facility, Greene said.
All three were evaluated at the hospital, and one was airlifted to Albany Medical Center for further examination, he added.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. The FAA is investigating the incident.
Wednesday’s crash is the latest in a rash of aviation disasters in recent weeks.
In January, a Black Hawk military helicopter and an American Airlines jet collided near Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., killing all 67 people on board both aircrafts.
Days later, a medical jet carrying six people crashed in northeast Philadelphia, leaving no survivors. All were killed, along with a victim in a car.
A week later, a Bering Air flight carrying 10 people to Nome, Alaska vanished. The bodies of all of the victims and the plane wreckage were recovered days later.
In mid-February, a Delta Airlines plane landed upside down at Toronto Pearson International Airport. All 80 passengers survived, but several suffered injuries.
Two days later, disaster struck again when two planes — a Lancair and Cessna 172 — collided in mid-air near an Arizona airport without an air traffic control tower, killing two people.
This week, a Southwest Airlines plane was involved in a near miss when it narrowly dodged colliding with a private jet at Chicago Midway Airport upon landing.
Despite growing concerns around air safety, given the recent alarming incidents, data underscores that air travel is still extraordinarily safe.
The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash, while the odds of dying on airplanes are too rare to calculate.
