A Flamingo Air plane crashed in North Andros on Friday, killing all 10 people on board and ending a short flight that had left Nassau for San Andros. The crash has shaken the Bahamas, where a beloved music group and a young passenger were among the dead.
The Bahamian Aircraft Accident Investigation Authority said the plane had departed Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau and was headed to San Andros when it went down. Da Pond Band said five of its members died in the crash: Giovanni McKenzie, Mateo Winder, Rashad Storr, Tonique Gilot and Travis Johnson. The group also said Melvin Henfield, known as DJ Fresh, was on the flight, along with three other passengers whose names have not been released.
The crash matters now because it came on the same day Flamingo Air was dealing with a second emergency. Earlier Friday, another company plane caught fire after landing in Nassau, though no one was hurt. After both incidents, Flamingo Air suspended all flights, turning one day into a crisis for the airline and for families still trying to understand who was on the plane.
Shenia Roberts said she had flown from Nassau on the same plane and with the same pilot around 7 a.m. and had no problems. She said, “You could tell it was an old plane,” but added, “But we didn't have any issues.” That account does not explain why the later flight crashed, and it is part of what makes the wreck so hard to absorb for people who had trusted the aircraft only hours earlier.
For Anasthasia Rolle, the loss was personal and immediate. She said she believed her 16-year-old son, Nicholas Oliver Jr., was among those killed. Rolle said he had been set to take a ferry earlier in the day with his father, but they got there too late. She said he was excited to visit family and attend the festival, a detail that now hangs over a crash investigators have only begun to examine.
Da Pond Band had been scheduled to perform at an Independence Day celebration on Andros Island, and the flight was part of a routine trip that normally takes under 20 minutes. Instead, it became one of the deadliest aviation incidents in the Bahamas in recent memory. The immediate question is no longer about the concert the band never reached, but what caused the plane to go down on a route that had apparently been flown safely only hours before.
