'Miraculous': 11 plane crash survivors rescued at sea off Florida

May 13 - All 11 people aboard a private airplane that crashed at sea off central Florida survived the wreck and were rescued from their lifeboat hours later by a U.S. Air Force Reserve team, U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force officials said on Wednesday.

"For all those people to survive is pretty miraculous," Air Force Major Elizabeth Piowaty, commander of one of the aircraft involved in the rescue, told reporters at a news briefing a day after Tuesday's crash.

The ill-fated plane, a twin-engine turboprop flying from the Bahamas with 11 adults on board, went down in the Atlantic about 80 miles (129 km) off Melbourne, Florida, activating an emergency locator signal that was picked up by the Coast Guard.

Piowaty's HC-130J Combat King II, a plane designed for combat search and rescue, was already airborne on a training mission when the search was initiated, and her crew immediately joined the operation, according to the Coast Guard.

The major said her team spotted the life raft as a thunderstorm was approaching and dropped a package of food, water and additional flotation to sustain the survivors until rescuers could reach them in the water.

By then the survivors "had already been in the raft for about five hours, and we could tell just by looking at them they were in distress, physically, mentally, emotionally," Air Force Captain Rory Whipple, one of the pararescuers, recalled at the briefing.

The survivors ultimately were hoisted to safety by the crew of a hovering rescue helicopter, dispatched from the Air Force Reserve's 920th Rescue Wing from a base near Melbourne, and were flown to Melbourne Orlando International Airport for medical attention, officials said.

Whipple said the crew managed to get all 11 survivors into the helicopter with nine hoists, completing the rescue with just five minutes of fuel left before they would have reached the point of needing to refuel mid-air or land immediately.

Air Force and Coast Guard officials said they had no immediate information about the extent of injuries and medical conditions of the survivors.

Bahamian authorities were investigating the cause of the crash, but the aircraft was reported to have experienced engine failure, according to the Coast Guard. The agency said the plane reportedly left Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas and was headed for Freeport on Grand Bahama Island, a distance of about 100 miles. REUTERS