A U.S. military rescue crew in Florida described their 'quite miraculous' operation to save all 11 people from a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean, even as they themselves had to hastily leave the scene with just five minutes of fuel remaining.
Members of the 920th Rescue Wing, based at Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral, quickly reached the passengers and crew in rough seas on Tuesday. They had escaped from a small twin-engine Beechcraft that crashed into the water about 80 miles off the coast of Melbourne, eastern Florida.
When the rescuers arrived — in a Combat King II transport plane and an HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter — the survivors, all adults from the Bahamas, had been huddled together on a single small life raft for about five hours. There was no sign of the aircraft or debris, and the first rescue team said the passengers had no idea help was coming.
Major Elizabeth Piowaty, pilot of the transport plane, said at a news conference: 'I've never known anyone to survive a crash into the ocean. And from what I saw, it was pretty miraculous that all those people survived and got onto the raft together.'
Over nearly an hour and a half, using a winch and basket, the helicopter crew made nine lifts to bring all the survivors aboard, then flew them to waiting ambulances at Melbourne Airport.
Lieutenant Colonel Matt Johnson, the helicopter pilot, revealed that his aircraft had only about five minutes of fuel remaining for the rescue operation when the last person was pulled from the raft. He called that moment 'bingo time', a military term meaning 'the hard deadline we need to leave the scene and return because we're running out of fuel.' His helicopter could have refueled in the air if it had exceeded the bingo level and run out, but that would have delayed getting the survivors — some of whom needed medical attention — to shore.
Piowaty said an approaching thunderstorm added urgency to the search, which was triggered by a signal from the aircraft emitted on impact and picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard. The plane was believed to be on a domestic flight between the Bahamian islands of Marsh Harbour and Grand Bahama when it went down. The cause is under investigation.
Air Force Captain Rory Whipple, one of the crew members lowered to the life raft, said the survivors were 'in distress, physically, mentally, emotionally' after their long spell at sea, unaware whether rescue was possible. 'They had no idea we were coming until we were right overhead. You have to imagine the mental trauma they endured out there, not knowing if anyone was coming to get them. But that's our job. We have the greatest job in the world — on someone's worst day, we do our best to bring people home.'
