Seven people are dead after a Grumman Goose airplane went down near Thormanby Island off British Columbia's Sunshine Coast on Sunday morning. The Pacific Coastal Airlines plane was on route to Powell River from Vancouver.

Spencer Smith, vice-president of Pacific Coastal, said that of the eight people on board, seven are confirmed dead.

The passengers were all employees of construction giant Peter Kiewit Sons Co., the main contractor on a run of river power project being built at the head of Toba Inlet, about 160 kilometres north of Vancouver.

After walking away from the crash scene, the sole survivor was picked up by a crew of Coast Guard auxilliary voluteers.

However, Smith said it would be "reckless to speculate'' about what caused the plane to go down. "Obviously, it's too early,'' he said.

The Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria confirmed eight people were on board.

"We have our search and rescue technicians and assets from 19 Wing Comox that are at the scene," said Lieut. Marguerite Dodds-Lepinski

She said the rescue centre received a call from a private citizen about 10:40 a.m., reporting that they had heard a crash.

Not long after, they received a call from an official with Pacific Coastal Airlines, the plane's owner, reporting that one of its planes was missing.

Rescue officials dispatched several search and rescue planes as well as a Coast Guard hovercraft to the scene.

The Sunshine Coast is located northwest of Vancouver, a Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre offiicial said.

B.C. has seen a spate of fatal plane crashes this year.

Two people were killed while two others survived the crash of a helicopter in northwest B.C. in early August.

The chartered Hughes MD-500D helicopter, owned by Prism Helicopters, plunged upside down into the Kitsault River near Alice Arm, about 150 kilometres northeast of Prince Rupert.

Two search and rescue technicians from a Canadian Forces Buffalo aircraft parachuted into the site and found two of the helicopter's four occupants dead.

Earlier that week, another Pacific Coastal Airlines' Grumman Goose crash on Vancouver Island and killed five people.

The wreckage was in dense bush and the two survivors were found quickly only because one of them clambered up a mountainside to a spot he could get cell reception.

He sent text messages to searchers who still struggled to locate them.

With a report by The Canadian Press