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Alaska National Guard via AP
- A small plane carrying a father and his two daughters crashed on an icy Alaska lake on March 23
- The pilot, John Morris Jr., and his kids survived on the wing of the plane for roughly 12 hours following the incident
- The FAA has begun disciplinary action against Morris, who allegedly had not responded to investigators’ queries, a National Transportation Safety Board official said
The pilot, who, along with his two daughters, was rescued after their small plane crashed on a frozen lake in Alaska, was not allowed to have passengers onboard and is facing disciplinary action from the Federal Aviation Administration, officials said.
In an interview with the Associated Press, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Mark Ward said that the pilot, John Morris Jr., has not yet cooperated with authorities regarding the Sunday, March 23, incident in which Morris and his children survived on the wing of the plane for roughly 12 hours following the crash on a Kenai Peninsula lake.
Morris had neither responded to investigators’ calls nor reported the incident within the mandatory 24-hour period, according to Ward.
"The FAA told me that he is a student pilot, he had no application in for a pilot’s license, and it appears he has a history of violating" the no passenger rules, Ward told the outlet. “At this point, we don’t know whether he landed purposely or for an emergency procedure, and he’s not talking to us.”
In a statement shared with PEOPLE, the NTSB said that the agency is "coordinating with the FAA to gather information about an event involving a Piper PA-12 airplane that landed in a frozen lake near Kenai, Alaska on Sunday afternoon. The NTSB is awaiting information on the extent of the plane’s damage to determine if it meets the threshold for an investigation.”
Morris and the FAA did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment on Thursday, March 27.
The Alaska Department of Public Safety said in a statement that the downed plane was spotted by a “good Samaritan” on Monday, March 24, after the Alaska State Troopers received a report shortly after 10:30 p.m. on Sunday of “an overdue Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser aircraft that had not returned.”
Terry Godes, the good Samaritan, told the AP that he came across a Facebook post on Sunday evening asking for help to search for the missing plane. According to the outlet, the plane did not have a locator beacon.
Godes then went out to search for the aircraft on Monday morning and headed toward Tustumena Lake, south of Anchorage, spotting what he thought was the wreckage.
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"It kind of broke my heart to see that, but as I got closer down and lower, I could see that there's three people on top of the wing," Godes told the outlet.
"They were alive and responsive and moving around," he added, saying that the three waved at him. "They spent a long, cold, dark, wet night out on top of a wing of an airplane that they weren't planning on.”
After spotting the plane, Godes contacted other searching pilots that he had found the aircraft, according to the outlet.
Authorities said the two juveniles were elementary and middle school age, Alaska’s News Source reported. They, along with the adult, were taken to a hospital after they were found, police added.
"Ultimately, the crew of that airplane were lucky,” Lt. Col. Brendon Holbrook, a commander of the 207th Aviation Regiment, told the AP, “because from what my guys told me, that plane was in the ice with the tail refrozen and if that tail hadn't refrozen, it would have sunk."