Residents in the Jane Usher Boulevard area of the city were awestruck to see a single-engine plane flying low with its engine belching smoke and flames yesterday morning shortly after 9:30, as it came lower and lower to the ground—crash-landing some three miles away, in the area of Belizean Beach.
The plane, a Cessna from the fleet of Tropic Air Caravans, had just lifted off from the Municipal Airstrip and was heading to the Philip Goldson International Airport to drop off four passengers.
In a very terse press release issued yesterday, Tropic Air said: “On Sunday, September 7, 2008 at approximately 9:40 a Tropic Air Caravan was on a flight from Belize City Municipal Airstrip to Goldson International when the captain was forced to make an emergency landing in the Belizean Beach area. There were four passengers on board and one sustained cuts to the head and there were no other injuries.”
But the purple and white single-engine Cessna 208 plane, reg. # V3HFQ, was in the sea — about 20 feet away from the beach. The plane had landed on its wheels and the tail section, the right wing, and the top fuselage were severely damaged, and its left wing was completely broken off.
The plane was piloted by a Belizean, Roy Bradley, 33. His passengers were Jonathon Brady, 22, Lindsay Brady, 21, David Yorke, 47, and Gay Yorke, 49, all American nationals from the US state of Texas.
All passengers received various types of injuries, none of which were life threatening. The Belize Civil Aviation authority is conducting an investigation of the crash.