THE CANADIAN PRESS

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VANCOUVER, B.C. - The airline that lost its pilot and six passengers in a crash on a remote B.C. island is resuming its float plane operations along the B.C. coast.

Pacific Coastal Airlines voluntarily grounded its seaplane fleet following Sunday's crash on Thormanby Island, off the coast north of Vancouver.

"We've gone through a period of evaluation and discussion and grief with our staff and crew... and everybody seems to be at the point, of the mindset to get back into the aircraft and get back to serving our customers," says company vice-president Spencer Smith.

"We do have a couple of crew that would like to take a little bit more time off and obviously we're affording them that opportunity."

Only one passenger survived the crash. He walked away from the wreckage and made his way to a beach, where rescuers spotted him.

Tom Wilson, of Fort Saskatchewan, B.C., is recovering in hospital.

Smith says seaplane flights from the terminal in Port Hardy on Vancouver Island resumed Wednesday morning.

The Second World War-era Grumman Goose went down on Thormanby Island Sunday morning as it transported workers to a hydroelectric project under construction in Toba Valley, north of Powell River, B.C.

It was the second crash of one of Pacific Coastal's Grumman Goose aircraft in just over three months.

In August, five people were killed when another crashed on Vancouver Island.

Smith says the decision to ground the seaplane fleet was voluntary and the decision to resume was the company's, and did not involve any regulatory bodies such as the Transportation Safety Board.

"So far there's been nothing mechanical determined to have failed. With certainly the first accident they've essentially ruled out any kind of failure and this accidents is looking, at the very initial stages, along the same lines," Smith says.

He says Pacific Coastal, a private, family-run airline that operates throughout B.C., had customers waiting for the floatplane fleet to take to the air again.

"They've been waiting patiently."