TRAINEE pilot Dr Keith Hammond is feared dead after his single engine Cessna aircraft went missing off the coast of Strawberry Fields, near Robins Bay in St Mary, yesterday morning.

Dr Hammond, a dentist and member of the Third Battalion of the 3rd Jamaica Regiment National Reserve, was a trainee pilot at the Caribbean Aviation Training Centre (CATC) at the Tinson Pen Aerodrome in Kingston.

A brother of paediatrician Dr Christine Gabbidon, Dr Hammond has homes in both Jamaica and Toronto, Canada, where his wife Dawn and 11 year-old daughter reside.

Last night, the Jamaica Defence (JDF) Coast Guard, which earlier launched a search for Dr Hammond, who was on a solo flight as part of his training, said it would resume the search this morning, with the help of a British naval ship.

But the search crew is expecting the worst after divers yesterday found traces of fuel, apparently leaked from the Cessna single engine craft, in the sea at Robins Bay.

"The search crew has seen traces oil in water in that vicinity (where the plane went missing)," Jennifer McDonald, the Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA) public relations officer, told the Observer yesterday.

The CAA has been investigating the disappearance of the aircraft.

Up to late afternoon personnel from the Jamaica Defence Force, the Coast Guard and the Marine Police searched the waters near the bottom of a steep cliff where the plane is believed to have disappeared at around 9:00 am.

"It is safe to assume that he's dead," Detective Corporal Cecile Williams told the Observer earlier in the day.

The police said the private plane, with registration number 172, and used as a training craft for persons wanting to gain a private pilot's licence, was being flown by Dr Hammond, who was trying to complete the final chapter in his schedule.
This required him to fly solo cross-country. The flight would have taken him from the Tinson Pen aerodrome to the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, then to the Boscobel Aerodrome in St Mary before terminating at Tinson Pen.

He was apparently on the Sangster Airport to Boscobel leg when the plane disappeared.

Half-an-hour after the plane disappeared an aerial search began, but it was not until around 2:00 pm that the Coast Guard was called in to assist after it became clear that the plane had not crashed on land.

"A flight becomes overdue 45 minutes after its intended landing time," explained the CATC's chief executive officer, Captain Errol Stewart.

He said actual flight times last between an average of 90 to 105 minutes on cross-country flights, excluding stop times. Yesterday's incident, he said, was the first of its kind at his school.

He however remained optimistic that Dr Hammond may have survived the mishap, describing the dentist and army captain as a "brother and friend".

"We are awaiting the preliminary results on the investigations, but I am very optimistic that he survived. However, I am very concerned that he may be injured and in need of medical attention," he told the Observer.

Meanwhile, Major Charlene Steer, the civil-military affairs officer at the JDF, said Dr Hammond's colleagues were in shock.

They are surprised and in shock because they saw him pretty recently," the army major said. "Now they are just trying to absorb what has happened."

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World