A single-engine airplane crashed in Haiti Wednesday along a major road on the southern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, leaving at least six people dead.
Dr. Jerry Chandler, who heads Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection, confirmed at least six deaths so far. First responders were on the scene.
The privately owned Cessna 207 was headed to the port city of Jacmel in the southeast when it crashed around 4 p.m. along the Carrefour Road in Port-au-Prince. The airplane had not too long before taken off from the capital city's domestic airport.
Jean Elie Fortune was on a minibus coming from Jacmel, he said, when he and the other passengers saw the aircraft spinning before plunging from the sky. It was unclear how many people may have been on board as well as the total number of dead including casualties on the ground.
“I counted six dead bodies,” Fortune told the Miami Herald.
Chandler said there were conflicting reports about who may or may not have survived the crash and his team was carrying out an investigation. Jude Edouard Pierre, the mayor of Carrefour said at least three of the dead were passengers on board the aircraft.
The pilot, whom he identified as Armando Gutierrez, he said, survived the crash and was at a local hospital along with two others who were injured when the airplane hit their vehicle when it came crashing down out of the sky.
Videos of the crash scene showed that when the aircraft hit the ground the engine was still running, which indicates that it may not have been total engine failure, according to a pilot. Images showed the six-seater broken into pieces, strewn across the roadway.
In July, two American missionaries were among six people killed when their single-engine airplane crashed in the commune of Léogâne in the locality of Mathurin, a section of Beauséjour.
Since last June when armed clashes between warring gangs caused the forced displacement of thousands of Haitians from their homes at the southern entrance of Port-au-Prince, Haitians have had to seek other routes to get to the southern regions of the country. As a result charter aircraft have been in high demand to help take passengers to areas cut off by gangs.
As a result of the increased dependence on private aircraft and the high costs of tickets, residents in the southwestern city of Les Cayes last week took to the streets in a violent protest, which led some demonstrators to tear apart and then burned a plane used by a Florida-based charity.
The eight-seat Piper Navajo Chieftain aircraft belonged to Agape Flights, which is based in Venice, Florida. The destruction led other charter operators to cancel all flights throughout Haiti the following day, and the largest domestic operator to temporarily halt flights to Les Cayes. Planes are operating again.
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