OTTAWA: A three-year-old girl survived an airplane crash in western Canada’s snow-capped Rocky Mountains, hanging upside down in a safety seat for four hours before being rescued, local media said on Tuesday.

When rescuers finally reached her in the treacherous mountain terrain, she told them her name, Kate Williams, and asked for her teddy bear, said the daily Globe and Mail.

“I picked up her teddy bear and went to hand it to her and she didn’t want the teddy bear because it was covered in snow. I had to brush off the teddy bear before she would take it,” Sergeant Scott Elliston told the newspaper.

The Cessna 172 operated by her grandfather had slammed into a icy creek bed, nose first. Her grandfather and another passenger died in the crash.

Authorities said the 65-year-old pilot had left his home in Golden, British Columbia, on Sunday afternoon en route to Edmonton, Alberta, where he owned an engineering company.

An hour later, the aircraft began transmitting a distress signal.

Bad weather complicated the search, but a rescue helicopter finally landed on a nearby logging road just before nightfall, and rescuers seized her from the carnage. The little girl was hospitalised overnight, and discharged late on Monday.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Marko Shehovac said it was a “miracle” the little girl survived the crash. She suffered no broken bones and had only a small mark on her face, he said. Her grandfather likely saved her life by “buckling her in real good,” he said.

—AFP