Former U.S. senator Ted Stevens killed in Alaska plane crash

America’s longest-serving Republican senator was killed on Tuesday night after a plane in which he was travelling with eight people crashed in Alaska.

Ted Stevens, who represented Alaska for 41 years until 2008, was among those killed when the aircraft came down late on Monday in south-west Alaska, 300 miles from Anchorage, near the town of Aleknagik.

Mitch Rose, a spokesman for Senator Stevens’s family, said that they had been notified that the 86 year-old was among those killed.

It was unclear whether Sean O’Keefe, 54, the former head of Nasa and the chief executive officer of the defence contractor EADS North America, had also perished in the crash.

His son was also on board the single-engine propeller plane, a DeHavilland DHC-3T, which was bringing the group to a remote part of the state for a fishing trip.

Rescuers arrived via helicopter and gave medical care to the four survivors, said Major Guy Hayes, a spokesman for Alaska’s National Guard. The cause of the crash was unclear.

The group was on a fishing trip to Agulowak Lodge. The plane, a DeHavilland DHC-3T propeller float plane, was owned by communications company GCI.

Senator Stevens was one of two survivors of a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife, Ann, and several others.

A Second World War veteran, he was appointed to the Senate in 1968 and served longer than any other Republican in history.

He lost his re-election bid in 2008 by a tiny margin after he was convicted on corruption charges related to gifts from an oil services company. The case was later thrown out because of prosecutorial misconduct.

While often gruff and short-tempered with staff, reporters and even other senators, the man known to Alaskans as "Uncle Ted" rose to become one of Washington’s most powerful Republicans.

Among his duties, the moderate Republican headed the key Senate Appropriations Committee, which doled out billions of federal dollars each year to states and communities.

He became known for the proposed "Bridge to Nowhere," which became a symbol of out-of-control "pork barrel" spending. The now-abandoned project would have linked the small town of Ketchikan to its island airport at a cost of $398 million.

Transport by small plane, including seaplanes, is common in Alaska and the crash is the third in less than two weeks in the state.