'They were great guys': Colleague remembers 2 Alaska men killed in Whitehorse plane crash

A colleague of the two pilots killed in a plane crash in Whitehorse on Monday is remembering them as great friends and hard workers.

Charles Benson, 56, of Palmer, Alaska, and Jeffrey Babcock, 58, of Wasilla, Alaska, died when their small airplane crashed shortly after taking off from the Whitehorse airport.

Both worked for the U.S. National Parks Service. Spokesperson Peter Christian said Babcock was the regional aviation manager for the service in Alaska, overseeing the agency's fleet of 20 planes. Benson was the parks service's safety manager.

"Safety wasn't just a by-word to stamp a document," Christian said.

"These two men really believed in getting hard work done and getting it done safely. And so you can imagine this is not how any of us would have expected either one of them to end up, in an airplane crash. But sometimes things just happen."

Babcock and Benson were on their way back from Minnesota where Benson had purchased the Cessna 170B that crashed Monday. The men were flying the plane back to Palmer and taking off for Anchorage when it went down in a wooded area 600 metres from runway 14 at the Whitehorse airport.

The crash is still under investigation by the Transportation Safety Board and the Yukon coroner's office.

Christian said Babcock had gone to Minnesota to help Benson fly his new plane back to Alaska. He said Babcock was familiar with the route, having gone south last year to help another coworker fly a plane back. 

"It's hard to talk about them together as one entity, but they were friends to each other," Christian said.

"They were good friends and they were friends to a lot of us — all the pilots and park rangers knew them well, because our work intersected with them so much. They were just well loved."