5 passengers were not seriously hurt this morning when a Tropic Air flight from San Pedro to Corozal went down over open water. In a mayday by the pilot of the 6 seater, he communicated to another pilot that he was experiencing engine problems and had to make an emergency landing. That forced him down into the water 13 miles from his departure point and that's where we found the wrecked aircraft today.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
This is where Tropic Air's first flight from San Pedro to Corozal Town this morning had to make an emergency landing. A BDF Defender took us on a fly over the coast off high bluff in the Corozal District. The Cessna 207 is submerged with only its right wing out of the water. Today President of Tropic Air John Grief told us about the water landing.
John Grief, Tropic Air - President
"We had one of our smaller aircrafts, a Cessna 207, which is a six place airplane with five local passengers on board. They departed San Pedro at 7 am for Corozal and somewhere in about the middle of the flight, apparently the pilot experienced engine trouble and elected to land near the coast but in the water on the main coastline of Belize on the way to Corozal, about half way there, and he was able to relay a mayday to another pilot who relayed it to us and after about thirty minutes we had a skiff pick them up and bring them back to San Pedro and no one was seriously hurt."
There were 5 passengers on board all female and as Grief explains no one was hurt, what is hurt however is Tropic Air's image that over the past five years has had at least two incidents where a water landing became necessary.
John Grief,
"It is kind of hard to take but that is aviation."
Alfonso Noble,
Is this denting your track record, in terms of the number and frequency of accidents
that you are having? I know you had one just a couple of years ago off the coast of Belize City.
John Grief,
"No it isn't actually. If you look at our safety record, the way the industry measures it is incidents per hundred thousand passengers and if you measure ours, we are as good or better than any of the international airlines. It is just unfortunate that we have, in the past three or four years, we've had several."
And while it's been unfortunate for Tropic, Grief maintains that there is no reason to panic over flying with his airplanes.
John Grief,
"The best description I can give you of how safe we are is that our family, our moms, our dads, our kids fly on these airplanes so safety is job one here and no one was hurt in this or any of the previous incidents we've had."
No one was hurt however a US$150,000 airplane is in the water and now investigators will try to figure out why.
An initial investigation by civil aviation shows that the plane had an engine failure. It is reported to have been adequately fuelled. Tomorrow efforts will be made to salvage it.
