Agape pilots home following crash (Excuse the pun of previous owners name from photo).
BRADENTON FL- Bruised, but thankful, two area pilots are back home after the engine in their turbo-prop Cessna cut out at 12,000 feet this week, sending them on a long glide into the Atlantic Ocean.
It just hit so hard, said Paolo Costa, the co-pilot on the Agape Flights Inc. plane that went down about 25 miles south of the Grand Bahamas at 10 p.m. on Thursday.
When the wheels hit the water the plane flipped over, leaving Costa and pilot Rocky Miller upside-down and underwater. Despite the disorienting position, the pilots kept their wits about them, Costa, 45, said.
I was very calm at that point and I had a conversation with the Lord and asked, Am I going to drown? and he said, No, said Costa, a Bradenton businessman.
The engine failure occurred as Miller and Costa were on their way back to Venice-based Agape, a charitable group that supplies hundreds of missionary families in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The accident leaves Agape looking to charter flights to fulfill its mission, said Charles Gardner, the organizations executive director.
Sadly, though, it appears that they had just paid off the aircraft last January. Hopefully the insurance will provide full replacement for the aircraft.
Ministries such as Agape, Missionary Air Group, and Missionary Aviation Fellowship do a lot of good works helping others in 3rd world countries in very adverse conditions.
They certainly fly in some very dangerous airspace, as unfortunate as their ditching at sea was, they were very, very lucky. I don’t even want to think how deafening the silence would be at 12000 feet, at night, over open ocean.
There is supposed to be a report on the accident in Sunday edition of Hearld Tribune Newspaper of South Florida.
I’m going empty from PBI to MDLR (Las Romanas in the Dominican) on Jan.1 in a Citation V. I think I could talk the boss into transporting some stuff for free.
