N766CC Twin Commanche, N24478 Cessna 152 midair FL.

Aviation Aviation News
1

PA-30 and Cessna 152. Waiting for details, apparently first responders enroute. Aircraft(s) reported down in Everglades. Both aircraft are now reported as down, 6 miles NW of Pompano.

In June 2000 there was a midair of a Lear 55 and a Extra 300S in the same area. ASN from June 2000 .

Latest report, The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office found wreckage in the Everglades along the Broward County line from a mid-air plane crash and is working with several agencies to determine if there are survivors.

Rescue crews are searching by helicopter and air boats, Sgt. Pete Palenzuela said.

The Sheriff’s Office responded to the crash after a call came in from the Miami International air tower.

The crash site is a remote area about 1 miles south of Lox Road, west of U.S. 441.

Flightaware N766CC , FAA Registry N766CC Twin Commanche and as yet unidentified Cessna 152.

2

UPDATED: 9:26 p.m. December 08, 2007

Two small, privately-owned planes - one based in Palm Beach County - crashed into the Everglades this afternoon about 100 yards from the Broward county line.

There were no survivors.

Recovery efforts have ended for the day. They will resume in the morning.

The crash occurred around 3 p.m. and initial reports indicate the planes may have collided in mid-air, according to Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman.

At least one of the planes is a small Piper and registered to a Waverly, Penn. man named Harry Duckworth, according to FAA records. It is not known if he was on the plane at the time of the accident.

The plane left Ocala around 1:30 p.m. and was scheduled to arrive at Pompano Beach Airpark at 3:05 p.m.

Joan Craig, Duckworth’s mother-in-law who lives in Kissimmee, hadn’t learned of the accident at 5 p.m. Saturday, and asked for the plane’s tail number for confirmation of the owner.

“Yes, that’s it, Charlie, Charlie,” she said calmly about the registration that ends in CC. Craig said she believes Duckworth was alone on the plane, and was headed to see a friend in Fort Lauderdale. Craig hoped her daughter, Susan Duckworth, had stayed behind in Ocala to visit with her granddaughter. “I don’t think she was going with him,” she said before asking for Federal Aviation Administration contact numbers.

The other plane is a Cessna 152 based in Palm Beach County. Names and other information is not being released. The pilot didn’t file a flight plan, making it difficult to easily tell how many passengers were on board.

Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office received a call from Miami International Air Tower about a possible mid-air collision in the area. A helicopter crew was sent to investigate and spotted wreckage - parts of a wing - near the border.

Emergency crews from Palm Beach County and Florida Fish and Wildlife responded by air and by boat. The crash occurred about 2 miles west of the end of “Lox” Road, in a mucky part of the Everglades inaccessible by boat. Firefighters had to make there way through 75 yards of knee- to thigh-high deep muck.

“They had to trek it through mud, saw grass, cattails, trees - all kinds of stuff ,” said Lyle Thomas, owner of Loxahatchee Everglades Tours, a nearby airboat tour business, He said about a dozen recreational airboaters converged near the crash scene in case firefighters needed their help, but emergency crews quickly declared it a “crime scene” and didn’t need the airboaters help. He said there were probably abut 30 people on airboats in the area when crash happened, but no boater he has talked to claimed to have witness the crash itself.

3

My heart goes out to the families of the victims… so close to the holidays. That is truly saddening.

4

I can’t believe the mother in law had to hear about the accident from the media. And then they quoted her reaction for the news. What assholes.

5

I know, right?

6

ANN News Coverage of this accident.

FAA Preliminary Report

7

Yeah. They ought to wait to report that the incident occurred at all until all remains have been identified and all family members have been notified.

:unamused:

8

Tower warned pilot of approaching plane before crash over Everglades
By Michael LaForgia

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 28, 2007

Monitoring the crowded skies over the Everglades west of Boca Raton, a Miami air traffic controller twice warned a twin-engine Piper flown by a Pennsylvania man that another plane was closing in from the north.

Even so, Harry Duckworth III might never have seen a flight student, who wasn’t communicating with the tower, fast approaching in a Cessna, according to a preliminary report released today.

At 2:54 p.m., the planes collided, killing Duckworth and Cleon Alvares, a 25-year-old trainee from Mumbai, India, and scattering wreckage over several acres of marsh.

In the moments before the crash, the Miami air traffic controller was on the radio with five other airplanes and another tower. He first warned Duckworth, who was flying by instruments, of Alvares’ approach 55 seconds before the collision, according to the report, which was prepared by an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

After that transmission, the controller radioed two other airplanes before hailing Duckworth again, saying "that traffic’s passing left to right " “Immediately thereafter,” the report continues, “there was an unintelligible transmission on the frequency that was cut off.” Recovery teams spent the next several days pulling pieces of the planes from the muck before the federal investigator pored over the wreckage to make his initial report.

A final report on the crash might take as long as a year to prepare.

Duckworth, 56, had been a pilot for more than 30 years, his family said. He was flying from Ocala to Pompano Beach on the day of the crash. He had plans to visit a childhood friend.

Alvares was a student at Kemper Aviation, a Lantana-based flight school that recruits heavily from India. He was the third pilot associated with Kemper to die in a plane crash since October, when a single-engine Piper flown by another Indian student and a veteran flight instructor crashed into a golf course west of Boynton Beach. Both pilots were killed and a third student, also from India, was critically injured.

Federal investigators reported finding an improperly assembled fuel filter on that plane, though inspectors have yet to release a final report.