UPDATE: US Coast Guard ends search for ‘missing’ mystery aircraft
USCG spokesman, Ricardo Castrodad told this news site that the Coast Guard received several reports of a distress in the northern area of St Thomas from approximately 6:45 on Saturday and some of the reports received indicated a possible downed aircraft.
“The Coast Guard searched with surface and air assets [including] a helicopter,” Castrodad said.
He further stated that the search was called off in the evening after the team saw no signs of any distress in the reported area. Further, there were no reports of any overdue aircraft or vessel or any other situation that would indicate a missing vessel.
It is believed that local authorities in St Thomas ended their search earlier in the afternoon yesterday.
According to Castrodad, since there was no additional information suggesting that an actual situation took place, the two-day search had to be called off completely, “usually you have reports of aircraft, you’d be expecting phone calls from family members, from aviation authorities… there’s none of that. Nobody has been contacting us that anybody is overdue or aircraft or vessel-wise,” he said.
The Coast Guard spokesman said with the search having unearthed “absolutely no signs of anything”, unless there is any other viable form of information or any information persons would want to share with the contact centre, they can call 787-289-2041.
See previous story posted December 22, 2013:
Small plane crashes near St Thomas’ Magens Bay
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, St Thomas, USVI - Reports indicate that a small plane went down last evening, December 21, 2013 across in the neighbouring US Virgin Islands.
Details are sketchy at this time but indications are that the plane went down off the coast of Magens Bay in the northern area of St Thomas at approximately 7:30 P.M.
It is unclear how many persons were aboard the aircraft at the time or whether there were any casualties resulting from the accident.
However, it was reported that members of the US Coast Guard and other personnel responded to the crash and are currently on the scene conducting investigations.
Efforts to contact the US Coast Guard for comments proved unsuccessful up to post time.
Virgin Islands News Online will provide further details as they become available.
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23 Responses to “UPDATE: US Coast Guard ends search for ‘missing’ mystery aircraft”
The plane land?