Body of Last Seaplane Victim Is Recovered

Two Miami-Dade firefighters fishing on their day off Friday found the body of the last victim in Monday’s crash of a seaplane.

All 20 people on board were killed when Chalk’s Ocean Airways Flight 101 plunged into the water near South Beach shortly after takeoff , but only 19 bodies were initially recovered.

The Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office has identified the dead man, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Miami Beach police had said the missing passenger was Sergio Danguillecourt, 42, of Miami, a member of the board of directors of Bacardi Ltd. and great-great-grandson of the company’s founder. His wife, Jacqueline Kriz Danguillecourt, was traveling with him.

Capt. Frank Leavitt said he and co-worker Andrea Sweetman spotted the body about 9:30 a.m. about three miles off Key Biscayne.

“It looked like it had been out there for days,” said Leavitt. “In our line of work, we deal with a lot of tragedy and we see a lot of bodies, but coming up on one like this, finding one like this, it is something that has really affected us.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it was considering issuing mandatory inspections of all G-73 airplanes, commonly known as Grumman G-73s or G-73Ts, the same type of craft as the Chalk’s seaplane.

The propeller-driven Grumman G-73 Turbine Mallard that crashed Monday was 58 years old.

In issuing a special safety bulletin for all G-73 owners, the FAA cited initial reports that the Chalk’s plane might have gone down because of fatigue on a wing spar. The bulletin said the FAA was monitoring the investigation and could issue mandatory inspections depending on the outcome.

FAA officials said there were only 25 to 30 such planes in the FAA database, including the remaining four owned by Chalk’s, which are the only ones operating commercially.

Three G-73s operate overseas, two in the Cayman Islands and one in Australia. None of those are operated by Chalk’s.

More than 50 family members of victims attended a memorial dinner Friday night at a Miami Beach restaurant. Among them was Leonard Stuart, who lost 11 relatives on the flight. He said families were overwhelmed by the support of the people of south Florida.

“It sure does make it a little bit easier to cope,” Stuart said.