Twenty people, including three children, were killed when a propeller engined seaplane broke apart in mid-flight and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off south Florida on Monday, officials and witnesses said.
Nineteen bodies had been recovered and one was still missing when the Coast Guard halted its search late on Monday, Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the US National Transportation and Safety Board, told reporters.
He said rescue crews hoped to raise the plane and recover its flight recorder yesterday.
PHOTO: AP
Coast Guard officials said three infants were among the 18 passengers and two crew members aboard the seaplane.
The charter aircraft, which belonged to Chalk's Ocean Airways, crashed in shallow waters at the entrance to Biscayne Bay, which separates the cities of Miami and Miami Beach, soon after taking off on Monday afternoon.
Video footage broadcast on CNN showed what appeared to be the plane's right wing breaking off in flames as the fuselage banked to the left and spiraled into the ocean.
Accident investigators said they were not ruling out any possible cause for the crash.
"We will be looking at everything in the investigation, nothing is off the table," Rosenker said.
FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said agents were sent to the crash scene as a routine matter "to make sure there's no terrorist link."
A flotilla of civilian, police and Coast Guard crafts swarmed to the site accompanied by several helicopters shortly after the crash.
Coast Guard divers plunged into the ocean but were unable to rescue any survivors.
The airplane, a 17-passenger Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallard -- a twin-engine amphibious aircraft manufactured in 1947 capable of operating from water as well as land-based airports -- was upside-down under several meters of water and visible from the air.
One witness, who identified herself only as "Terry", was surfing close to the rocks with a group of friends at the time of the crash.
"It went right over my head, when I looked up it was on fire. It was about 6m above the water. I really thought it would land on us."
Then "there was a loud squealing sound and lots of smoke came out of the back" and it went down, she said.
Richard Lopes was fishing on the jetty when the plane went down.
"The plane made a sharp left-hand turn, and then there was a huge ball of fire," he said.
The plane "blew up before it hit the water," said dockworker Juan Lopez.
"The flight departed the sea plane base at Watson Island on its way to the island of Bimini in Bahamas," Roger Nair, director of operations for Chalk's Ocean Airways, said.
It is the 86-year-old company's "only crash with passengers," he said.
"We're a close-knit family airline. The thoughts and prayers are with the passenger and crews," he added.
Once it was clear there were no survivors from the crash, Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez gave a press conference along with Fire Chief Floyd Jordan and Police Chief Donald Deluca.
Most of the bodies were found still strapped to their seats, said Jordan.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS