MIAMI – A seaplane packed with passengers crashed in flames off Miami Beach and sank into the U.S. city’s main shipping channel on Monday, killing at least 19 people, authorities said.
The twin-engine seaplane crashed just off the southern tip of Miami Beach after taking off for the Bahamian island of Bimini with 18 passengers, including three infants, and two crew, according to Roger Nair, general manager of Chalk’s Ocean Airways, which operated the ill-fated aircraft.
Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez told a news conference 19 bodies had been recovered from the crash site.
Witnesses said the plane seemed to explode in the sky before falling into Government Cut, the entry to the Port of Miami, where it came to rest in shallow water next to a jetty.
“There was a huge explosion in the sky, a big ball of smoke,” one witness, Frank Amadeo, told Miami’s Channel 7 television. “It just sort of spiraled downward,” he added.
Surfers who saw the plane fly overhead as they waited for waves off Miami Beach’s Art Deco hotel and restaurant district said the aircraft made a screeching sound as it came down, one wing on fire.
“The left wing was in flames, a big flame and then we hear boom and the whole plane was on fire. It went straight into the water,” said Vincent DiLella, a 19-year-old surfer.
“It looked like it (the fire) was going along the left wing and then suddenly it took over the whole plane,” he told Reuters.
The crash site, near some of Miami Beach’s newest condominium towers, was surrounded by Coast Guard and other rescue vessels. Scuba divers descended to the plane just visible under the murky green sea surface to recover the bodies.
Planes operated by Chalk’s are a familiar sight in Miami, swooping low over the shipping channel to splash to a landing near Watson Island, just off the downtown area.
Nair, the airline’s general manager, told reporters there had been no fatalities involving passengers on Chalk’s since it was founded in 1919.
The airline has operated between Miami and the Bahamas since 1919, when Prohibition was in full force and rum-running from the Bahamas provided a steady income, Chalk’s said on its Web site.
The company said novelist Ernest Hemingway was one of its first regulars, flying to Bimini for big game fishing. It had also flown notorious gangster Al Capone and Hollywood greats like Errol Flynn.
The company’s fleet consists of Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallard twin-engine aircraft, powered by Pratt & Whitney-Canada PT-6 turbine engines. The planes are capable of carrying 17 passengers at a cruising speed of 200 mph (324 kph), the company’s Web site says.
By Jim Loney, Brocktown News
(Additional reporting by Tom Brown and Michael Christie)
www.localnewsleader.com
