Pilot lands small plane in Long Island Sound, calls 911 to report location before rescue
The Coast Guard pulled two people wearing lifejackets from the water shortly before 11 a.m. on Sunday, about a half-hour after the plane went down a few miles (kilometers) off the coast of Branford, Connecticut, officials said. The survivors were treated for minor injuries and hypothermia symptoms, and brought to a hospital, the Branford Fire Department said.
'We arrived shortly after the Coast Guard,' Branford Fire Chief Thomas Mahoney said. 'The Coast Guard did a great job in responding to the area, retrieving the people out of the water before things got worse. And the pilot obviously did a really good job of landing the plane in choppy seas. Those outcomes don't always come out as well as this did.'
The water temperature at the time was about 60 degrees F (15.6 degrees C), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mahoney said the seas were a choppy 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 meters).
The single-engine Piper PA-32-300 Cherokee Six took off from Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford, Connecticut, shortly before 10:14 a.m. and was in the air for about 12 minutes when it went down, according to the flight-tracking company FlightAware.
About 10 minutes into the flight, the pilot declared an emergency and contacted air traffic controllers in New York, who directed them to try to land about 8 miles (13 kilometers) away at Tweed-New Haven Airport, according to Andrew King, a spokesperson for Avports, which manages Tweed-New Haven.
Tweed-New Haven officials prepared a runway for a possible emergency landing. But air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, King said.
Mahoney said after the plane went into the water, the pilot used a cellphone to call 911 and report his plane crashed into Long Island Sound and was taking on water. The aircraft was completely submerged when rescuers arrived.
State and federal records indicate the plane is owned by a limited-liability company based in Newtown, Connecticut, and the company's principal is James Edwards. Edwards declined to comment Monday.
The crash occurred near Outer Island, an archipelago of about two dozen islands off the Connecticut coast.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was waiting for the recovery of the aircraft to determine the level of damage before deciding whether an NTSB investigation is warranted.
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Times
3 hours ago
- Times
My son died in the Air India crash. They sent back the wrong body
Amanda Donaghey stood by the blackened, burnt-out trees, birds still tweeting eerily in their branches, and stared at the wreckage of Air India flight 171. The plane, now twisted pieces of melted metal strewn around a college campus in Ahmedabad, had been carrying her son. Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek, 39, and his husband, Jamie, 45, had been returning to Britain after celebrating their wedding anniversary celebrations in India when the plane crashed, less than a minute in to the flight. An investigation is currently focused on why the fuel to the engines was cut — possibly by one of the pilots. Donaghey had known immediately she needed to travel here from her home in France — it was both a grim pilgrimage to the place where her son died and a mother's last duty to bring his remains home. 'Visiting the site and seeing it was something I felt like I had to do. I wanted to understand what had happened,' she said this week. 'I remember all these burnt trees. The trees were scorched black. But there were still birds and squirrels in those trees, which I found quite profound. It was like a bomb site. You would think it was from a war scene, but there were still these small birds twittering,' she recalled. The crash had been devastating; the aircraft had broken up before erupting in a fireball. She was determined to help find Fiongal's remains and gave blood in the hope of finding a DNA match. After three days, just as she was losing confidence in the search, Donaghey was told there was a 'match' for her son. It meant she could finally bring his remains back to the UK, where she hoped to be able to lay him to rest next to Jamie, whose body had already been identified and sent home. 'I arrived back in London Gatwick with the assurance that Fiongal was in the casket,' she said. But just as the family were planning for the funerals of the two men, the police got in touch. The British coroner had run a second DNA test: the remains in Fiongal's coffin were not his. 'It was heartbreaking,' said Donaghey. 'We don't know what poor person is in that casket. This is an appalling thing to have happened.' And it was not an isolated mistake. Last week, Miten Patel revealed that 'other remains' had been found in the coffin he believed contained the body of his mother, Shobhana, 71, who was killed in the crash alongside his father, Ashok, 74. They were finally able to bury her earlier this week in the UK. Donaghey has spoken to The Sunday Times as she asks the British and Indian authorities to do whatever is necessary to find the remains of her son and bring him home. Fiongal Greenlaw-Meek had 'always been a free spirit' with 'a certain charisma that is hard to explain', according to his older brother. Interested in fashion from a young age, he studied at the Royal College of Art and worked as a fashion designer, heading up design houses in London and Asia. Later he delved into spirituality, reiki and yoga, and set up a business in London in 2018, the Wellness Foundry, to 'share my findings, teachings and gifts with others.' He and Jamie married in 2022. Fiongal and Jamie were among the first victims of the Air India crash to be named. On their last night in India, the couple had posted on social media about their 'magical experience'. Smiling in the airport lounge, they posted another short video just before they boarded the aircraft with the message 'Goodbye India'. Donaghey, 66, who moved to France from Cambridgeshire 22 years ago, had not immediately realised her son was on the plane. She had heard about the crash before going out for a horse ride, but thought he had flown home two days earlier. She returned to a call from Fiongal's father. 'He told me the boys were on that plane,' she said. 'And that's when I knew.' Immediately, she decided to travel to India. It was a complicated trip from her home in the south of France and she flew out two days later. In Delhi, she boarded a chartered jet provided by Air India and arrived in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, western India, on June 17. She was met by a crisis management team from the British High Commission. Family members of victims could take a DNA test at the city's Civil Hospital so the remains could begin to be identified. 'I hadn't slept for two or three days,' Donaghey said. 'They gave me the option to go to a hotel and rest but I decided I wanted to go straight to the hospital and get the test done. I remember thinking, 'the sooner I get tested, the sooner I can get the two boys on the plane and bring them home'.' A DNA sample had already been taken from a family member of Jamie's in the UK and sent to India. Donaghey was taken to the hospital by a female member of the British crisis team and met the helpers, whom she calls 'angels', provided by Air India to support the relatives. She was taken to a converted schoolroom with bench-style seats, where she filled out paperwork and a doctor took her blood. 'I was told, 'the blood test will be analysed to track down Fiongal and that could take up to 72 hours to happen'.' Afterwards she checked into a hotel. While she waited for news, a member of the British crisis team took her to the BJ Medical College hostel, which Flight 171 had hit. Donaghey said: 'It was devastating for the aircraft. Obviously they had a series of cordons and I wasn't allowed to pass the last cordon because the tail of the aircraft was still stuck in one of the buildings and it was dangerous.' While she was going through her search, Miten Patel was doing what he could to bring home his parents, Ashok, a financial advisor, and Shobhana, a retired microbiologist. Married since 1970s, the couple had travelled to India for a Hindu religious trip known as a yatra, which helps people find peace when they eventually die. Miten had flown out from the UK within 24 hours with dental records and DNA samples to help with identifying his parents' bodies. 'It was the first thing on my mind: Mum and Dad are coming home,' he said. While he waited for confirmation of their remains, he was given back some of his parents' belongings from the wreckage — his father's shirt and his mother's swan pendant necklace, which his daughter Amira will now inherit. On June 20, three days after arriving, Donaghey was told a DNA 'match' for Fiongal had been found. The next day she met with representatives from the hospital, the British High Commission and an officer from Avon & Somerset police, sent over from the UK as a disaster victim investigator. 'I was told they had found part of Fiongal but not all of him,' Donaghey said. 'I said I wanted to stay until they had finished looking.' By this time Jamie's body had been found. He was returned to the UK in a coffin on June 26. Jamie had been sitting beside Fiongal, who was in 22A, on the left-hand side of the aircraft. The sole survivor of the crash, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, was a few rows in front of them in seat 11A. Donaghey returned to the crash site a second time. 'I was starting to be told by the emergency workers searching the crash site, 'There is nothing left to find'.' The families were told that human remains less than 5cm long would not be recovered. Other remains were sent to a pathology lab in India to be tagged and logged. From there, the remains would be transferred to a coffin. Donaghey then heard from British officials that one of the coffins already returned to the UK had been investigated by a coroner and found to contain the remains of multiple people. This would turn out to be the coffin belonging to Shobhana Patel. 'That was when I was really starting to worry about the recovery process,' Donaghey said. On June 28, she decided to return home with Fiongal's coffin. Time was of the essence, since conditions at the hospital for preserving remains were not up to British standards. The coffin came with paperwork and Fiongal's hospital DNA reference number: A339. Her only option was to travel back with his remains on an Air India flight to Gatwick. Back in Britain, Fiongal's remains were handed over to the senior coroner for Inner West London, Dr Fiona Wilcox. Donaghey returned to Cambridgeshire to be supported by her sister, as well as family liaison officers from Cambridgeshire police. On July 4, family liaison officers asked Donaghey for a meeting the next day with Fiongal's father, sister and brother. That was when the officers told them: 'We don't have Fiongal. We have carried out the DNA tests and we do not have Fiongal.' Donaghey said: 'I had my doubts but to be told that was heartbreaking.' The families realised their hopes of laying Fiongal and Jamie to rest together were no longer possible. 'We have spent every day since then on the phone to the Foreign Office, trying to get a response on where Fiongal is,' Donaghey said. 'All the time, I feel like I'm just standing on the edge of a black hole thinking, 'Has he been disposed of?' 'We would like to be able to do the rites necessary for Fiongal in order for us to move on as a family. And that is what is missing. We don't know what poor person is in that casket. This is an appalling thing to have happened. And we would now like the British government to do everything in its power to find out, and bring Fiongal home.' Of the 242 people on Air India Flight 171, 53 were British. Many of them were of Indian heritage and so were buried in India. Only 12 sets of remains were returned to Britain. It is these that would have undergone the second round of DNA testing. The other 10 were all matches. For Miten the most important thing was to make sure that only his mother's remains were buried. 'There may have been a mistake done. But for religious reasons we need to make sure my mother is my mother and not somebody else's remains,' Miten said. 'Knowing 100 per cent that it is mum is very important to us.' A small comfort was that his father's wedding ring was also finally returned. 'It's a miracle to get it back,' said Miten. Questions remain over whether the remains of those who were buried in India without a second round of tests were correct. James Healy-Pratt, an international aviation lawyer and partner with Keystone Law, who is representing 20 of the bereaved families affected by the air disaster, said the families were in contact with Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister's office and David Lammy, the foreign secretary. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, visited Britain last week. Healy-Pratt said: 'Losing a loved one in an air accident is traumatic in itself. These families deserve answers about how this co-mingling of DNA and misidentification of remains occurred. Discussions are ongoing with the UK police and the Foreign Office.' A government spokesperson said: 'We understand that this is an extremely distressing time for the families, and our thoughts remain with them. Formal identification of bodies is a matter for the Indian authorities. We continue to liaise with the government of Gujarat and the government of India on behalf of the Inner West London senior coroner to support the coronial process.'
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
US Coast Guard accused of detaining fisherman in Canadian waters and tossing him in jail
A Canadian man claims he was arrested by the United States Coast Guard and turned over to Border Patrol after he was accused of fishing in American waters, which he denies. Edouard Lallemand, 60, borrowed a friend's boat on Sunday, July 20, to go fishing about nine miles north of the border separating the two countries on the northern tip of Lake Champlain. He claims that despite having fished the area for decades and being certain he had not crossed the border, the Coast Guard approached him and said he was in the United States. 'I said, 'No, I'm very sorry, I'm in Canada.' And I said, 'I'm polite enough to talk to you guys but you cannot arrest me. You can't come across the border and pick me up.' But they did,' he told CTV News. He attempted to restart his boat engine - having turned it off initially at their request - when he claims the Coast Guard started to push him into the United States until it capsized and he fell overboard. Lallemand claims the Coast Guard tried to tie their boat to his and didn't bother to try and help him. 'The third time I went down, coming out with water in my mouth, spitting it out, I said, 'Throw me a buoy!' He added that when the Coast Guard arrested him, he'd never seen somebody 'so angry.' Lallemand said that he was transferred by the Coast Guard to Border Patrol, who took his fingerprints and put him in jail with just a 'dirty' blanket. He was released about two hours after being put in jail but he said: 'I'm never going to be the same.' 'I want the people to know and to be aware: stay away from the border. Even if it's 500, 600 feet from there.' His wife, Darlene Fielding, wrote an angry post on her Facebook page in English and Quebecois French, stating: 'What happened to my husband should NEVER happen again.' Fielding - who said that she and her husband 'treat our pets' better than Lallemand was treated - called the experience 'terrifying' and told CTV her husband looked 'like a beaten man.' Lallemand had visible scrapes on his legs from the encounter. 'My husband was injured, traumatized, and stripped of his rights. We don't have the means to hire a lawyer, but we DO have the right to speak out,' she added in her Facebook post. The Coast Guard adamantly denies having approached Lallemand in Canadian waters in a statement, saying they were in American territory. 'While the Coast Guard's 29-ft response boat was alongside the vessel, the operator put the vessel in motion and ignored commands to maintain course and speed for boarding purposes,' they said. They then said that when Lallemand restarted his boat, he hit their vessel. 'The vessel then made an abrupt starboard turn and struck the port bow of the Coast Guard small-boat at coordinates 45°00.792'N, 073°10.608'W, approximately 65 yards south of the U.S./Canadian border. The collision caused the vessel to capsize, putting the operator in the water,' the statement reads. 'The actions of the operator of the Canadian vessel are currently under investigation,' they added. has reached out to U.S. Border Patrol for comment. It's yet another example of tensions between the United States and Canada, formerly close allies. The relationship has been strained in recent months by political rhetoric and cross-border air quality concerns linked to Canada's record-breaking wildfires. Earlier this month, Donald Trump threw a grenade on the tariff negotiations between the United States and Canada with a blistering letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney. The two nations had been trying to settle the tariff war that broke out when Trump returned to office and announced plans to reorganize world trade. Canadian officials had hoped a deal was close, but Trump's latest letter - which he shared to Truth Social on Thursday night - set negotiations back to square one. The letter revealed he would raise tariffs on Canadian products to 35 percent from August 1 - a 10 percent increase on the current levy. Trump said the tariff hike was in part due to the fentanyl crisis and Canada's 'failure to stop the drugs from pouring into our country '. 'I must mention that the flow of fentanyl is hardly the only challenge we have with Canada, which has many tariff, and non-tariff, policies and trade barriers,' Trump wrote in the letter. Carney, who took office this year in a liberal win partly powered by Trump's trade actions and threats to make Canada the 51st state, his back in an online posting. 'Throughout the current trade negotiations with the United States, the Canadian government has steadfastly defended our workers and businesses,' Carney wrote. 'We will continue to do so as we work towards the revised deadline of August 1. Canada has made vital progress to stop the scourge of fentanyl in North America. We are committed to continuing to work with the United States to save lives and protect communities in both our countries. That came after Trump mentioned fentanyl in his trade letter, and called out Canada for a 'failure' to control it. 'If Canada works with me to stop the flow of fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter,' Trump added. 'These tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your country,' he added. The latest round of tariffs are in addition to previously imposed sectoral tariffs on steel, copper and aluminum, which came into effect for most countries on June 4 at a whopping 50 percent. The latest travel advisory follows years of quietly simmering friction that boiled over earlier this year when President Trump repeatedly mocked former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, referring to Canada as America's '51st state,' and demoting Trudeau to the title of 'governor.' The introduction of tariffs between the two countries and Trump's hardline immigration policies have also seen Canadian travel to the US plunge by up to 40 percent this spring, as stories of tourists caught in the web of US immigration enforcement made headlines across the border. In response to the spike in travel-related incidents, the Canadian government has since revised its own advisory for citizens visiting the US, bluntly stating that travelers must 'comply and be forthcoming in all interactions with border authorities' and warning that visitors 'could be detained while awaiting deportation.' Last month the US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra attempted to tamp down concerns, calling the fears 'unfounded' and the high-profile detentions 'isolated.'
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Coastguard warns to fill sand holes dug at beaches
Islanders are being reminded by the Coastguard to fill any large holes they dig in the sand at the beach before Coastguard said digging holes posed "a safety risk" to others and could end in a month, the UK Coastguard said a teenager had been "extremely lucky" not to have suffocated after being buried 7ft (about 2m) deep in said: "These holes can collapse without warning, potentially trapping or injuring people. There have been tragic incidents in the UK, including fatalities, where individuals were buried under sand after holes collapsed." The Coastguard added the holes could become dangerous when left unattended or "obscured by shifting tides"."Our advice is to be respectful of other beach users and always fill in any holes you have dug before leaving the beach," it said.
