Witness: Plane Crash Followed by 'Eerie' Silence
Dec. 20, 2005 — -- Sabine Hugueny and her 12-year-old son were on Fisher Island Beach off the coast of Miami on Monday when they witnessed a seaplane explode into flames, killing all 20 people aboard.
"The plane was flying very low and I could tell it was crashing," Hugueny said. "There was a big ball of fire on the right side of the plane where the wing meets the body. You could see that the plane was leering to the side, and then, suddenly, the wing came off."
Hugueny estimated it took just five to 10 seconds from the time she saw the plane around 2:30 p.m. to the time it crashed into the ocean carrying two crew members and 18 passengers, including three infants.
Hugueny said the crash was followed by an "eerie" silence, with between five to 10 minutes passing before rescuers reached the crash site. From Hugueny's perspective on the beach -- where she and her son were alone, out of range for anyone to hear their cries for help -- it looked as if a cargo ship passed directly over the plane's entry point into the water.
"When bad things like this happen, time seems to slow down," Hugueny said.
The Chalk's Ocean Airways plane was built in 1949 and had some previous mechanical trouble, according to FAA records. But Mark Rosenker, acting chief of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the age of the plane most likely did not play a role in the crash.
"An aircraft can continue to operate for a significantly long period of time," Rosenker said. "We're still working under the assumption that it was an accident."
Rosenker said recovery efforts would resume at dawn when divers would be looking for clues to the crash, in particular the black box.
Chalks' only other fatal crash happened in 1994 when two pilots died in a crash of their seaplane near Key West.
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