'We didn't die': Pilot recounts crash landing in Atlantic with 10 aboard

In 25 years of flying, Ian Nixon had ne'er faced thing similar the clang that near him and 10 passengers stranded for hours successful the Atlantic Ocean, waiting to beryllium rescued disconnected Florida's eastbound coast.

On Tuesday, during what should person been a regular 20-minute formation betwixt 2 islands successful the Bahamas, Nixon watched 1 catastrophe unfold aft different - archetypal the navigation system, past the radio, past 1 engine, and yet the other.

"I wasn't capable to scope anybody connected the vigor for a while," Nixon said. "I tried to telephone Freeport, [Bahamas]; I tried to telephone Miami radio. I don't cognize if they were proceeding me, but I didn't get a response," Nixon told CBS News, the BBC's US quality partner.

The level was headed from Marsh Harbour, successful the Bahamas' Abaco Islands, to Freeport, Grand Bahama.

With obscurity to land, the Bahamian aviator "ditched" the craft successful waters astir 175 miles (289km) northbound of Miami - a last-resort intentionally executed manoeuvre erstwhile nary different options are possible.

"Once I deed the water, my archetypal thought was, 'We didn't die,'" Nixon said.

What followed was an hours-long ordeal connected a beingness raft, arsenic the aviator and the passengers waited for rescuers to find them.

Nixon tried to support spirits up.

"I told them, 'In the adjacent 10 minutes, a level is going to come,'" helium said. "Then 1 of the passengers said, 'Hold on, did I perceive something?'"

It was the distant dependable of a chopper from the US Air Force's 920th Rescue Wing.

The portion was connected a grooming ngo erstwhile it was redirected to assistance successful the hunt and rescue effort, aft an exigency locator transmitter awesome alerted the US Coast Guard astir a imaginable distress situation.

"They had already been successful the raft for astir 5 hours," Capt Rory Whipple said. "You could archer conscionable by looking astatine them that they were successful distress - physically, mentally and emotionally."

The rescuers worked against the timepiece to bring each the passengers to information earlier the helicopters needed to refuel.

"I person not known anyone to past a ditching successful the ocean," Maj Elizabeth Piowaty, an craft commandant who assisted with the rescue, said. " And, from what I've seen, I mean, for each those radical to past is beauteous miraculous."

All 11 radical connected committee were taken to a Florida hospital. Three suffered insignificant injuries.

"Everybody was rejoicing to cognize that we get saved due to the fact that we thought we were going to die," Olympia Outten, 1 of the passengers connected the plane, said afterwards. "That was a country that [was] conscionable similar it was a movie."

The Bahamian authorities are investigating the origin of the crash.