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Plane crashes after two men decide to fly to famous taco stall

‘People don’t usually survive this kind of stuff, and... we were in a dive,’ 21-year-old man says after surviving crash-landing

Gustaf Kilander
Washington, DC
Thursday 10 June 2021 13:13 EDT
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Two men rescued by chopper after crash-landing small plane in Florida Everglades

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Two men flying across Florida to get tacos crash-landed in the Everglades after an engine failure.

On Tuesday, Jose Ecarri, 21, was flying northwest from Tamiami, west of downtown Miami, to Arcadia, north of Cape Coral, along with a pilot friend in a Piper PA-32, when the small plane’s only engine failed.

They were forced to make a crash-landing close to a highway in the Everglades, NBC 6 reported. Managing to get out of the plane without any injuries following the landing, the men were rescued by a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue helicopter who picked them up using a harness around 12pm.

Sky 10 footage showed the men walking around the downed plane, which didn't look to be badly damaged, as they waited to be picked up by the helicopter.

The friend of Mr Ecarri was taken back to Tamiami by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, while Mr Ecarri was taken to a nearby fire control station where he was picked up by his mother.

“We were like 2,000 feet and we had an engine failure,” Mr Ecarri told Local 10. “We looked at each other and we were like, ’We’re alive.’ This doesn’t happen very often.”

"People don’t usually survive this kind of stuff, and the rate we were descending, we were in a dive,” Mr Ecarri added. “I was thinking about my grandpa. He's up there and he will save me. He saved me today.”

The men were flying to the Taqueria Queretaro food truck near the City of Arcadia Municipal Airport, who posted about the crash on its Facebook page.

“We were going down and we were trying to reach I-75 but we couldn’t make it,” Mr Ecarri said.

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