The local airline company, Tropic Air, continues to be the subject of an inquiry by the Department of Civil Aviation after one of its aircraft plunged into the waters surrounding the Belize City Municipal Airstrip.
A prompt press release from the company said in its entirety, “On Tuesday, December 4, 2014 at approximately 2:20 PM flight #281 was going from San Pedro to Belize City Municipal Airport and upon landing went off the end of the runway into the water. There were 5 passengers and pilot and no injuries incurred.”
No official information as to the cause of plane’s mishap has been provided as yet, but the press has learned that the pilot of the plane has reported to police that the engine died as soon after he landed. That meant that no reverse thrusters could have been applied to decelerate the aircraft before it ended up in the Caribbean Sea.
The Civil Aviation Department, which is in charge of the investigation, has not released any information at this time, but they assure that they are taking the incident very seriously. Civil Aviation personnel also know that the aircraft, valued 4 million dollars, was acquired by Tropic Air a month ago, and that it is the fifteenth in their fleet, since they gave it a full inspection before it was cleared for use in Belize. The owner of the airline company says that the plane is only about 3 or 4 months old.
But, there is another problem that the downed plane has caused for the airline company and for the government regulators. 90 gallons of the Cessna airplane’s aviation fuel spilled from its tank into the water. The argument can be made that it is a minor spill and that it was contained before the rest of the full tank’s capacity could have escaped into the sea. The fact remains that the waters where the aircraft ended up has been polluted with oil.
In the month of November alone, Tropic Air has reportedly been involved in at least two other similar incidents which went unreported to the public. One at the Municipal Airstrip and one in Cayo.
