All 10 people on board a Flamingo Air Cessna 402C were killed when the aircraft came down in North Andros, the Bahamas, on Friday 10 July 2026. The Royal Bahamas Police Force said nine men and one woman died. The aircraft, registered C6-FLX, had departed Lynden Pindling International Airport in Nassau and was bound for San Andros when it crashed into dense bush shortly after 1pm local time, short of the runway.
Prime Minister Philip Davis confirmed there were no survivors. According to the Bahamas Musicians and Entertainers Union, the manifest included members of Da Pond Band, a well-known Bahamian group, and a popular island DJ known as DJ Fresh. The Aviation Safety Network has logged the accident in its database as a hull loss involving a Cessna 402C Utiliner III.
A workhorse of the Bahamian island network
The Cessna 402 is a piston-engine, unpressurised light twin that first flew in the mid-1960s. It seats up to nine passengers plus a pilot and is powered by two Continental piston engines driving three-blade propellers. Its combination of short-field capability, simple systems and low operating cost has made it a fixture of Caribbean and Florida commuter operations, where hops between islands are often measured in minutes rather than hours. The 402C variant, of which C6-FLX was one, added a longer wing and higher maximum weight.
Nassau to San Andros is exactly the kind of sector the type was built for: a short over-water leg linking the main hub to a thinly served outer island. Aircraft of this class operate under different certification and crewing rules than airliners, and many are flown single-pilot.
Operating certificate suspended
The Ministry of Energy, Utilities and Aviation announced a temporary suspension of Flamingo Air's Air Operator Certificate, grounding the carrier's flights. Officials linked the suspension to two separate safety occurrences on the same day. Earlier on Friday, a Flamingo Air aircraft en route to Mayaguana turned back to Nassau after the pilot reported a concern; after landing and once passengers had left the aircraft, it caught fire.
Suspending an operator's certificate is a precautionary regulatory tool rather than a finding of fault. It halts commercial flying while investigators and inspectors examine maintenance records, crew qualifications and operational procedures. The certificate can be reinstated once the regulator is satisfied the operator meets the required standards.
What comes next
An accident of this kind triggers a formal safety investigation, which will seek to establish the sequence of events from departure to impact. Investigators typically examine the wreckage and impact geometry, maintenance and airworthiness records, fuel and loading data, weather at the time, and any available radar or ADS-B track. Light twins of this generation are not required to carry the flight data and cockpit voice recorders fitted to airliners, which can make the physical evidence and the recorded track the primary sources of information.
No cause has been established and none should be inferred at this stage. Early reports of an aircraft encountering difficulty on approach describe what witnesses saw, not why it happened; that determination is for the investigation.
For a small island nation where scheduled light-twin flying is part of everyday life, the loss is being felt well beyond aviation. The government has expressed its condolences to the families of those on board.
Sources: Aviation Safety Network, Associated Press. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Elena Vargas.
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