19 said killed in plane crash in US
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-20 08:40

"It exploded in the air and one of the wings flew out of there. The other part of the plane was on fire and it just went straight down," said Maurice D'Giovianni, 42, a surfer who was in the water at the time.

Coast Guard spokesman Dana Warr also saw the crash from the Coast Guard office on an island in a channel known as Government Cut. "Everything looked normal, I saw the aircraft take off like it does every other times. I didn't think anything of it when I saw the black smoke from the pier, until I then heard the Coast Guard alarms go off," he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to investigate.

The plane went down near the mouth of Government Cut, a channel that cruise ships and freighters take past South Beach into the Port of Miami. The channel is up to 30 feet deep near the crash site, but parts of the plane could be seen in shallower areas.

The skies were cloudy, but there was no rain or lightning in the area at the time of the crash.

Coast Guardsmen and emergency workers wearing protective suits hauled bodies up from rescue boats, rushing to find victims before darkness fell. Law enforcement speedboats, divers and helicopters took part in the search and were joined by others in private boats, on personal watercraft and on surfboards.

Rescuers search the crash site after a seaplane crashed and sank off Miami Beach into the city's main shipping channel, December 19, 2005.[Reuters]

Chalk's Ocean Airways flies between Miami and the Bahamas, using planes that take off and land on the water. Chalk's aircraft have been featured in TV shows such as "Miami Vice." Its seaplanes take off in view of the port and the multimillion-dollar homes that dot islands in the bay.

Founded by Arthur "Pappy" Chalk in 1919, the airline thrived during Prohibition, taking bootleggers, their customers and customs agents to Bimini. According to the airline, its most famous regular passenger was Ernest Hemingway, who flew to Bimini to go big-game fishing.

One of its planes was hijacked to Cuba in 1974 and the company has since had a policy of not carrying enough fuel to get to Havana.

Two years later, the airline was sold to Resorts International, which owned properties on Paradise Island. Donald Trump bought it in 1988 and sold it a few months later to Merv Griffin. The owner as of 1995 was Seth Atwood of United Capital Corporation of Illinois/Atwood Enterprises.

According to its Web site, Chalk's operates 17-passenger Turbine Mallards.

Chalk's general manager Roger Nair said it was the airline's first accident with a passenger fatality. The National Transportation Safety Board database indicates no fatal accidents involving passengers for Chalk's since 1982, when the database began.

Chalk's only crash involving fatalities happened in 1994, when two pilots died in a crash of their seaplane near Key West.