At least 12 people died on Monday when a small plane with 18 occupants crashed into the sea while taking off from the tourist Caribbean island of Roatán, in northern Honduras, authorities reported. “The plane crash in Roatán has unfortunately left 12 people dead, 5 alive, and one missing at this hour of the night,” said a statement from the Fire Department.
“Ten people were rescued and the hospital has just informed us that six have died,” Major Wilmer Guerrero of the Fire Department had initially told journalists. He indicated that the plane fell “quite deep” about a kilometer from the coast, where nine divers submerged and managed to rescue the victims.
Officials had initially said the aircraft was carrying 17 people on board, including two children, but later the firefighters and police clarified that there were 18, including a flight attendant in the count. One of the deceased is the renowned Honduran singer-songwriter Aurelio Martínez, 55, who performed music from his Garífuna ethnicity, formed by Afro-descendants and Caribbean indigenous people, according to relatives of the victim.
According to Major Guerrero, among the injured is a 40-year-old French female passenger, who was “transferred to the [Mario] Catarino Rivas hospital” in the city of San Pedro Sula. The Lanhsa company plane took off towards nightfall from Roatán, one of the Bay Islands and one of Honduras’ main tourist destinations, heading to the port of Ceiba on the mainland.
“The plane almost fell on top of us, I was fishing,” a man whose identity was not disclosed told the HCH channel. The runway of Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport is at the edge of the sea, in the southern part of Roatán island. Honduran President Xiomara Castro said she had “immediately activated the Emergency Operations Committee team,” made up of the armed forces, firefighters, and other institutions, to assist the victims of the accident.
“The public hospitals in San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba are ready to care for the passengers who were traveling,” the president added on her X social network account. The aircraft “at the moment of takeoff suffered a sharp turn to the right side of the runway, falling into the water,” said Carlos Padilla, a Civil Aeronautics official.
The Jetstream 42 plane had “an apparent mechanical failure at the time of takeoff” and lost its course, the Honduran police said in a statement. “The aircraft, which was transporting 15 passengers, two pilots, and a flight attendant, lost power in its engines and fell into the sea approximately one kilometer from the airstrip,” it added.
