Investigators say too early to determine cause of deadly plane crash in Bahamas

The chief in­ves­ti­ga­tor with the Air­craft Ac­ci­dent In­ves­ti­ga­tion Au­thor­i­ty (AA­IA) of The Ba­hamas, Kendall I. Dorsett Jr., con­firmed Tues­day that they are still gath­er­ing da­ta re­gard­ing last Fri­day’s plane crash that claimed the lives of all 10 peo­ple on board.

“It is very, it is very, too much ear­ly in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. You’re look­ing at just four days af­ter the ac­ci­dent. So the on­ly thing that we have done, we call this the on-scene gath­er­ing of in­for­ma­tion phase.

“And so ba­si­cal­ly we are just gath­er­ing da­ta at this time. Like I said in the be­gin­ning, at this time, we can­not pro­vide any find­ings, con­clu­sion, analy­sis of prob­a­ble cause. That’s at the end of the process, we are able to present that with­in the 12 month time,” Dorsett told a news brief­ing.

Po­lice had ear­li­er said that pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions had so far re­vealed that the Cess­na Flamin­go Air air­craft with reg­is­tra­tion num­ber C6-FLX had crashed in the pine yard near North An­dros Air­port.

They said that a 24-year-old per­son, who had sur­vived the crash and found with “ex­ten­sive burns cov­er­ing his body” had “re­gret­tably…suc­cumbed to his in­juries”.

Dorsett told re­porters that the the air­craft was on the vi­su­al flight rules plan from the Lin­den Pin­dling In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port en route to the San An­dres Air­port when the tragedy oc­curred.

“Pre­lim­i­nary flight track­ing da­ta in­di­cates a de­scent of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1000 feet at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 46 pm (lo­cal time). And this was head­ed in a souther­ly di­rec­tion. And this would have con­tin­ued un­til con­tact was lost at 12 48 p.m.

“There was im­pact with trees and the air­craft opt­ed to trav­el a short dis­tance be­fore com­ing to rest in a heav­i­ly wood­ed area. And this area was to the west of run­way 12 of the San An­dros Air­port at a dis­tance of ap­prox­i­mate­ly one nau­ti­cal mile. “

Dorsett said that the air­craft was de­stroyed ”by fire, nine per­sons re­ceiv­ing fa­tal in­juries” and that “it was de­ter­mined that the land­ing gear was ob­served to be in an ex­tend­ed po­si­tion and the flaps were al­so ob­served to be in an ex­tend­ed po­si­tion.

“So based on those ob­ser­va­tions, it would ap­pear that the air­craft would have been con­fig­ured for land­ing at the time of the ac­ci­dent,” he said, adding that an “air­craft of this size do not are not re­quired by reg­u­la­tions to have a cock­pit voice recorder or flight da­ta recorder.

“And so that’s that’s a norm. And so per­sons or in­ves­ti­ga­tors are aware that that piece of in­for­ma­tion you would not have ac­cess to…if it was a big­ger air­craft. But cer­tain­ly the ev­i­dence that we can’t col­lect, it does give us an in­di­ca­tion and it pro­vides enough in­for­ma­tion for us to come up with a de­ter­mi­na­tion of prob­a­ble cause and oth­er find­ings.

“So that’s re­al­ly not…go­ing to be an ad­van­tage,” Dorsett said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that it would “def­i­nite­ly an ad­van­tage to have it.

“But that does not mean that we can­not come up with a prob­a­ble cause. That would not pre­vent us from do­ing so,” he said, adding that the last time the pi­lot would have made con­nec­tion with air traf­fic, would be avail­able.

“What­ev­er recorders they have, we have,” he said, adding “we start­ed to re­ceive a tranche of record­ings and files and all of that.”

Me­dia re­ports said five mem­bers of the well known Da Pond Band died in the crash, in­clud­ing band leader Gio­van­ni McKen­zie, Rashad Storr, Ma­teo Winder, Toniquea Gilot, and Tra’vis John­son.

The re­ports said that Melvin Hen­field, a DJ, and An­dros na­tives Quintin My­ers and Mac­aro Rolle, were al­so on­board the flight. The pi­lot, Franklyn Cam­bridge, al­so died in the crash.

The ac­ci­dent oc­curred as Ba­hamas cel­e­brat­ed In­de­pen­dence Day on Fri­day and Prime Min­is­ter Philip Davis it has be­come a day of mourn­ing.

“To every fam­i­ly that has re­ceived the dev­as­tat­ing news that some­one they love will not be com­ing home we of­fer our deep­est con­do­lences. There are no words that can take away your pain.”

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and Avi­a­tion said that the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Ba­hamas (CAAB) tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed the Air Op­er­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate (AOC) of Flamin­go Air and that the sus­pen­sion was im­posed “in the in­ter­est of avi­a­tion and safe­ty fol­low­ing two safe­ty in­ci­dents that oc­curred to­day”.

Mean­while, North An­dros Is­land Ad­min­is­tra­tor, Bev­er­ly Laramore, says be­cause the plane went in­to flames af­ter im­pact, col­lect­ing ev­i­dence as well as the re­mains of the de­ceased has been chal­leng­ing.

“What­ev­er re­mains that they were able to find, they have re­moved. We know that there was a in­tense fire. And so you have where, I don’t wan­na be too graph­ic be­cause you have fam­i­ly mem­bers who will prob­a­bly lis­ten to this, but you have from a fire, you’re gonna have re­mains and not al­ways in­tact.

“And so the po­lice have to go through those ash­es to en­sure that they re­move all of the re­mains to process the in­ves­ti­ga­tion fur­ther,” Laramore said, adding that the pain the com­mu­ni­ty is feel­ing is com­pound­ed by the lack of in­for­ma­tion as to who ex­act­ly may have been aboard the air­craft.

She said since Fri­day, very lit­tle in­for­ma­tion has been made avail­able.

“We’re still wait­ing on the of­fi­cial re­ports as to who was on that flight be­cause we have not got­ten the of­fi­cial names. What we’re go­ing on by now is that per­sons who were in­tend­ed to come and we can­not get in con­tact with them. We’re go­ing on that ba­sis as to who may have been on the flight.

“But we still have not got­ten a con­fir­ma­tion to say ex­act­ly be­cause we could not iden­ti­fy the bod­ies, we are still on that term,” she said, adding that a can­dle­light vig­il will be held lat­er on Tues­day to ho­n­our the lives of the five Dupont band mem­bers and the five oth­er pas­sen­gers who died in that trag­ic crash on Fri­day in North An­dros. —NAS­SAU, Ba­hamas (CMC)