Student killed, instructor injured in plane crash at Miramar shopping center
An aviation student was killed and his instructor seriously injured after their small plane crashed Tuesday at the entrance to a Miramar shopping plaza with a Publix, Chase bank branch and 7-Eleven gas station. One person on the ground was injured.
The twin-engine plane crashed and caught fire around 9 a.m. at the Miramar Commons shopping center. It went down about 350 yards from the Pembroke-Hiatus Road intersection, 170 yards from the Publix and close enough to char the sign of the Chase bank branch at 11100 Pembroke Road.
Police identified the student late Tuesday afternoon as Miramar resident Mark Daniel Scott, 25. On Wednesday, the aviation school identified the senior flight instructor as Andres Bastidas. He was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood with serious injuries and is in “stable condition,” said Eddy Luy, the academy’s vice president.
A third person, struck by crash debris, was treated on the scene by Miramar Fire Rescue.
Scott left Jamaica to train at Wayman Aviation Academy and was an “advanced student” who was nearly done with his training, said Luy. On Tuesday, he was piloting a training flight with Bastidas.
“Andres and Mark dedicated their lives to this,” Luy said early Wednesday. “They loved being in the sky.”
The academy is based at North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines and at Opa-locka Executive Airport and lists several partnerships with airlines and schools on its website, including Miami Dade College’s Eig-Watson School of Aviation, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (which has a residential campus in Daytona Beach and Prescott, AZ) and Virginia based Liberty University.
Sid Severe, 53, said he was on his way to work at about 8:15 a.m. when he saw the plane flying close to traffic.
“I saw the plane unusually way low. It was wavering; it looked like it was in trouble,” said Severe, who lives at an apartment complex across from Miramar Commons.
Dashcam video provided to the Miami Herald shows the Piper PA-34 clipping power lines moments before crashing on the south side of Pembroke Road, into the trees and bushes bordering the Chase parking lot. The plane narrowly avoided the roof of a 7-Eleven gas station across from the bank. Police say they began getting calls at 8:58 a.m. from people who saw the crash.
Neighbors and employees from the nearby Publix were gathered behind the caution tape at the crash site Tuesday afternoon to take pictures of the debris and the burned-up Chase bank sign. A couple dozen shoppers walked to and from the nearby grocery store with their carts, as investigators evaluated the plane’s remains from the morning crash a few feet away.
“It was normal traffic and people stopped because they were like, ‘What the heck?’... It was really fast,” Severe said in front of the crash site, which still smelled like smoke in the early afternoon. About a handful of onlookers stood by and speculated about the plane’s malfunction. One pointed out the plane appeared to hit some power lines in the area, but narrowly missed the nearby gas station.
“I think it was luck,” one man said.
Helicopter video from Total Traffic Miami earlier in the day showed the burning plane in the trees and bushes bordering the Chase parking lot. Firefighters sprayed the area around the plane, trying to extinguish the flames as smoke filled the air. Other video of the scene showed firefighters covering an area of the crashed plane with a yellow tarp. The plane has a large “W” printed on one of its wings.
Based on the preliminary investigation, the “pilot told air traffic controllers that he was attempting to return to the airport when the aircraft went down,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Miramar police confirmed the pilot likely was trying to land the plane on Pembroke Road.
Miramar and Pembroke Pines police shut down lanes on Pembroke and Hiatus roads and redirected traffic through the shopping center parking lot.
Because of the damage to power lines, the crash also caused momentary outages, affecting about 2,500 customers nearby, according to Florida Power & Light spokesman Doug Andrews. Power was fully restored in less than hour, Andrews said.
The aviation school, which has served the South Florida community for more than 30 years, has had trouble in its instructional flights in recent years:
▪ August 2018 — an instructor and student flying back to the school from Punta Gorda had to make an emergency landing on Interstate 75 after the single-engine Cessna had engine troubles, according to Local 10. The two men were unharmed.
▪ July 2017 — a single-engine Piper PA28R also had to make a forced landing on a levee in Pembroke Pines after its engine lost power, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The flight instructor and the pilot-graded student were not injured.
▪ And in 2016, a flight instructor and a student pilot had to be rescued after their twin-engine Piper Seneca went down in the Everglades after losing power, according to Local 10.
Luy said that while the flight school has had incidents in the past, people also need to consider how many years Wayman has provided services in South Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean.
‘Everyone in aviation understands the risks and trains for them ... and aviation is the safest form of transportation,” Luy said.
Luy said his thoughts are with Scott’s family and that the academy is in contact with the families of Scott and Bastidas. The academy says it is also cooperating with the investigation.
The FAA says it is investigating Tuesday’s crash. The National Transportation Safety Board will later determine the probable cause of the accident.
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 9:34 AM.
