Incidents and Accidents
In 1994, Captain John Alberto and his co-pilot drowned after their aircraft sank due to the failure of the airplane's bilge pump while they were taxiing at Key West. Captain Alberto left behind a wife and two children. Jimmy Buffett dedicated a chapter to Captain Alberto in his book A Pirate Looks At Fifty.
On December 19, 2005, Chalk's Ocean Airways Flight 101 from Fort Lauderdale to Bimini made an unscheduled stop at Watson Island, Miami. Within a minute of taking-off again, it fell into the sea near Miami Beach. Witnesses said they saw smoke billowing from the plane and the separation of its right wing as it plunged into the ocean. None of the twenty people on board – eighteen passengers and two pilots – survived. At first, only nineteen of the twenty bodies were found (by the Coast Guard and Miami Beach Ocean Rescue), but, on December 23, the twentieth was found by two Miami-Dade firefighters while fishing on their day off.
Investigators later identified cracks in the main support beam connecting the wing to the fuselage. The plane was a Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallard, registration N2969, manufactured in 1947. It was the second fatal accident for Chalk's Ocean Airways. A few months after the NTSB released its report on the crash, the airline shut down.
Read more about this topic: Chalk's International Airlines
Famous quotes containing the words incidents and/or accidents:
“An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Some accidents there are in life that a little folly is necessary to help us out of.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)