FREEPORT – Bad weather and failing light forced US Coast Guard and BASRA officials to call off an air and sea search for a small Bahamian-registered aircraft that is believed to have crashed in rough seas off Abaco on Friday afternoon.<\/P><\/p>\n
According to police reports, a single engine Dragonfly aircraft with registration number N 50453 piloted by Bahamian James H Wells crashed around 1.O5pm in waters between Guana Cay and Scotland Cay on the oceanside.<\/P><\/p>\n
However, the aircraft was not located up to press time on Friday evening, and the US Coast Guard only confirmed that a distress signal had been received.<\/P><\/p>\n
Speaking with The Tribune at 6.30 last night, Guana Cay resident Randy Albury said “they found a transponder, but they did not find a plane or anyone.”<\/P><\/p>\n
“We found it strange that a plane was not found because there is a transponder and EPUR on these planes and I find it strange that the transponder was not going off,” said Mr James Otton of Guana Fire Rescue.<\/P><\/p>\n
“A lot of people have been out looking all about where they thought it went down,” Mr Albury said. “The Coast Guard has been here and a bunch of private planes, but nobody found anything as yet. This happened about two hours ago. It’s getting dark and I guess they will have to suspend their search.”<\/P><\/p>\n
Another resident said he had heard that it was “an ultra-light plane, one of those put together planes”, but he did not know if this report was true. After 6 o’clock last night, The Tribune received word that due to eight to 12-foot seas and about 25-knot winds, the search had to be called off.<\/P><\/p>\n
Supt Basil Rahming reported that Abaco police received information about the crash from officials at the Abaco Airport Crash Rescue shortly after 1pm on Friday.<\/P><\/p>\n
The US Coast Guard Station in Miami also contacted police in Grand Bahama with reports of a plane crash off Abaco.<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr Rahming said that search and rescue vessels have been unable to launch a surface search due to extremely rough conditions at sea.<\/P><\/p>\n
However, it is reported that a group of Guana Cay residents set out in boats scouring the area for the plane after learning news of the crash.<\/P><\/p>\n
An aircraft launched by BASRA Abaco and a US Coast Guard helicopter from AUTEC Base in Andros have been unable to locate the aircraft.<\/P><\/p>\n
A Coast Guard official in Miami told The Tribune that they picked up an activated distress beacon, which is a requirement on all aircraft.<\/P><\/p>\n
The Coast Guard helicopter search team had still not located the plane around 3.30pm on Friday after some two hours during its search three miles off Treasure Cay.<\/P><\/p>\n
By DENISE MAYCOCK Tribune Freeport Reporter<\/SMALL><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aircraft still not located after search called off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}