Thu | Mar 28, 2024

SDA Church plane crashes after running out of fuel

Published:Wednesday | February 20, 2019 | 12:00 AM

GEORGETOWN (CMC):

Members of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) late Monday rescued the pilot of the single-engine Cessna plane that crashed as it headed to Georgetown from the town of Mabaruma to the northwest of here.

The planet, which belongs to a United States (US) medical missionary group, was on a medical-evacuation mission at the time of the incident.

According to director general of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Egbert Field, the US-registered plane ran out of fuel and went down just a few miles from the airport.

Demerara Waves Online reports that after an almost-five-hour operation that included the GDF Air Corps and ground troops, Captain Lincoln Gomez and a policeman, Michael Grimmond, were taken to the army helicopter and flown to Georgetown.

Gomez was rushed by GDF ambulance to the Georgetown Public Hospital, while Grimmond was taken by the army’s ambulance to the privately owned St Joseph’s Mercy Hospital.

The GCAA says the plane went on a mission to get the corpse of an American missionary who died while climbing a mountain – however, the body was left at the crash site.

The plane was flying out the body from the ­interior of the country to the Eugene F. Correia ‘Ogle’ International Airport when the mishap occurred.

The plane is operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to provide emergency medical evacuation services mainly from the interior.