Today the South East Coast Editor went a flying and watched some people swimming. (Note to Arlo in Accounting: How much are we paying this guy?)
Wow, not sure how to start this story other than to say I rented an airplane from NS Aviation at HWO (Hollywood North Perry Airport) and flew down the beach from Ft. Lauderdale to Marathon, Florida in the Keys. It is about an hour and a half one way, the weather was perfect, the ocean turquoise, the winds calm at 1500 feet. I stayed clear of the MIA and Homestead traffic and just enjoyed myself immensely tooling along at about 110 mph.
As I got closer to Marathon, I switched the radio to the Unicom frequency (122.8) and listened to all the traffic from Marco Island, Pahoke to the Bahamas calling out their position reports....all quite boring and pretty much ignorable until a very calm voice says, "MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY, Waco going down." This chilling message on the common frequency is about as rare a hens teeth and anybody who flies know this is an EMERGENCY. I heard the pilot say it again when he added "position one mile south of Marathon." If you look at a map ( I knew where he was because I was in the landing pattern at Marathon) and he was in the water, with sightseeing passengers.
The airwaves got a little crowded with pilots and ground ops responding and somewhat cluttered with unusable chatter and guessing. I stayed out of the fray and when I heard, "they are all okay, swimming beside the plane," decided not to circle and rubberneck. I landed at Marathon and when I got to the FBO, everyone was a twitter with the news...nobody hurt, plane intact, resting on the bottom.
So naturally, I had an ice cold Diet Coke, visited the lav and took off for a look before I skedaddled back home....
UPDATE: Aero News Network picked up on the story from our intrepid editor. Hat tips all around!
