11 survivors drift for hrs before dramatic rescue

AP

Florida

Eleven survivors of a plane crash off the Florida coast spent five hours drifting on a life raft with no way to call for help and no idea if rescuers would find them, US military personnel said on Wednesday.

As a thunderstorm approached, the survivors huddled under a tarp before search-and-rescue crews from the US military located them in the Atlantic Ocean.

“You could tell just by looking at them that they were in distress, physically, mentally and emotionally,” Air Force Captain Rory Whipple, a combat rescue specialist involved in the mission, said during a news conference.

The Beechcraft 300 King Air turboprop had been travelling from Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas to Grand Bahama International Airport in Freeport when it suffered engine failure on Tuesday, authorities said.

The pilot ditched the aircraft about 80 km off Vero Beach, Florida, and managed to evacuate all 10 passengers onto a yellow life raft. Three passengers sustained minor injuries. Air Force Reserve Major Elizabeth Piowaty said the pilot’s actions were critical to the group’s survival.

“I’ve not known anyone to survive a ditching in the ocean,” Piowaty said. 

“For all those people to survive is pretty miraculous.”

The plane’s emergency beacon alerted the US Coast Guard. An Air Force Reserve crew conducting a training mission in an HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter was redirected to assist in the search.

After locating the survivors, rescuers dropped additional rafts, food and water before hoisting all 11 people to safety amid rough ocean swells.

All survivors were flown to Melbourne Orlando Interna­tio­nal Airport and were reported to be in stable condition. The US Federal Aviation Administration said it would investigate the crash.