The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating a fatal vintage plane crash that took place early Monday evening in Whitehorse.

Two Alaska men were confirmed dead at the scene.

Gerrit Vermeer, a senior investigator, air operations, said Tuesday the four-seater, single-engine 1952 Cessna 170B came down in a wooded area near the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport not long after taking off.

The pilot and sole passenger died in the crash.

Heather Jones, the Yukon’s chief coroner, identified them as Charles Eric Benson, 56, and Jeffrey Brian Babcock, 58. Benson was from Palmer, while Babcock lived in Wasilla.

National Park Service spokesman Peter Christian said from Alaska that Babcock was in charge of the agency’s aviation program and oversaw about 15 pilots and 20 aircraft.

Benson was the regional safety manager for the agency in Alaska.

Jones said the plane was registered to Benson. He is believed to have been the pilot.

According to a release from Jones, the two men were flying home to Alaska from Minnesota. They had travelled to that state to purchase the vintage Cessna.

They left Minnesota last Saturday. Having flown from Watson Lake, they had landed in Whitehorse at 4:10 p.m. Monday.

In Whitehorse, the plane took off at 5:29 p.m. The men were next heading to Anchorage, and then on to Palmer.

The crash, barely (2,000 feet) from the end of the runway and just west of the busy Robert Service Way baseball diamonds, also sparked a fire.

Airport and city firefighters doused the flames with assistance from a helicopter dropping water from a bucket. Wildland Fire Management also assisted.

No communications spokesperson from the Yukon government’s Department of Community Services returned the Star’s calls for more information on the response effort or indicate when the last fatal incident at the airport occurred. It has been at least several decades.

Eric Collard, a transportation safety board spokesperson, said an Edmonton-based investigation team arrived Tuesday in Whitehorse to look into the crash. The investigators were at the crash site just before noon that day.

Neither Collard or Vermeer were not in a position to give much information about the crash. The wreckage has been removed from the site.

The investigators are looking to speak with any witnesses or people involved in the doomed flight.

Vermeer said the investigators have been taking photos of the scene.

They want to speak with people at the airport who were involved in either fuelling the plane or developing its flight plan.

The investigation will have three phases. The first is gathering information. The second is analyzing the evidence.

The last would be to do up a report, whose public release could take six months to a year or longer.

Investigators could be on the field for a few days.

The length of time at the scene will depend on several factors. It could be longer if the team feels it has to look further into the plane itself.

“Our process is quite robust,” Vermeer said.

Jon Lee, another board spokesman, agreed that the probe will be a lengthy one.

“Collecting information on the pilot, the aircraft, the maintenance history, collecting weather information. If there was any closed-circuit TV imagery at the airport, we will try to get that,” Lee said.

Anyone looking to give information to the investigators can either call Whitehorse RCMP, who were among the emergency responders, or contact the safety board’s response line at 1-819-997-7887 or online at www.tsb.gc.ca.

Planes of that size are not required to carry data and voice recorders in Canada.

– With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press