Speaker 1: According to the FAA, a twin engine aircraft crash into
the Atlantic Ocean just after noon, roughly fifty miles east
of Vero Beach. Shortly after taking off. The pilot declared
an emergency with air traffic Control. Soon after communication was lost.
Speaker 2: This is the Miracle Files.
Speaker 3: I'm Emily Jones.
Speaker 4: And I'm Holly Worthington. Sometimes the news and social media
can feel pretty dark.
Speaker 5: And true crime can leave you afraid to even crawl
into bed. But we're here to prove that there are
more miracles than murders.
Speaker 4: In these special Miracles in the News episodes, we dig
through the headlines.
Speaker 5: For you because miracles still happen and God is still good.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Miracles in the News. Okay, Emily, I
want you to imagine your boarding a plane for what
should be probably one of the least memorable flights that
you've taken. Like you're in the Bahamas. You're just going
from island to island, across continents. It's beautiful outside. You
throw your bag under the seat, maybe glance out the window,
maybe think about what you're going to do when you land.
Absolutely nothing about this feels dangerous or like it's a
day that could turn ugly.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I already know where this is headed.
Speaker 5: And I'm supposed to fly in a few days, so
maybe it's coming to visit me.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the best time, Okay, go on.
Speaker 4: Well, honestly, most flights are safe. It's one of the
safest ways to travel.
Speaker 3: They say, doesn't feel like it.
Speaker 4: I know. It is a little scary, and unfortunately for
eleven people that were on a flight in the Bahamas,
things went very wrong and out of nowhere, the airplane
starts malfunctioning. The pilot is losing critical systems, including the engines.
Speaker 1: Behavian officials say the plane took off from Marsh Harbor
in the Bahamas headed to Freeport, what's typically a thirty
minute flight, but shortly after taking off, the pilot declared
an emergency with air traffic Control. Soon after communication was.
Speaker 6: Lost, authority say the twin engine turboprop experienced engine failure.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, terrifying.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So here's the plane's pilot, forty three year old
Nicks and describing what happened.
Speaker 7: I did my best.
Speaker 3: I had a lot of stuff going on in the aircraft.
Speaker 7: I was trying to get that under control.
Speaker 4: Basically Losso on my obligation, all radios over twenty five years,
and I've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 5: What would you do? I swear I have pictured this
exact moment in my head every time I fly. I'm
like on the edge of my seat waiting for this
to happen, Like, Okayhapules is taking us down.
Speaker 4: We got to work on your faith a little bit. Girl.
Speaker 2: I know, plane is scary.
Speaker 4: I don't know why, but yeah, I think we've all
had that thought a time or two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this is.
Speaker 4: No longer just a thought for these people. At this point,
both engines have completely failed. They're fifty to eighty miles offshore,
so all that is beneath the plane is open ocean,
which immediately changes the situation because there's nowhere to land,
no airports or roads or open fields, just ocean. And
Nixon has to make an onboard announcement that nobody on
the plane wants to hear. They're going to have to
land in the water. And I keep thinking about those
final moments leading up to impact, because, unlike so many emergencies,
like everybody on board understands what's about to happen. They
know they're going to crash. It would be so terrifying,
I know. And they also know that they're far from shore,
and they know that even if they survive hitting the water,
that only creates a whole other problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're going to be out in the middle of
the ocean. Exactly terrifying.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, Olympia Auten is with her thirty year old
niece and her two young adult sons on that flight,
and all she has time to do is brace for
imped and this is what she says happens next.
Speaker 6: The forty eight year old was traveling on a small
plane between Islands and the Bahamas Tuesday when they meet
a crash landing in the ocean.
Speaker 7: And it came down that when it hit it boom.
Speaker 4: Yeah, boom boom.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That plane hits the water hard. But despite being terrified,
pilot Ian Nixon makes an incredibly difficult landing as smoothly
as humanly possible, and upon landing, water starts pouring into
the cabin and Ian knows he needs to act fast.
Once he hit the water, I think my first sort
was he didn't die, he didn't die, Let's get.
Speaker 3: Out, Let's get out.
Speaker 5: So scary, It's like right from one emergency onto the
next yep.
Speaker 4: And if you can imagine the chaos in those seconds.
There's impact, there's confusion, there's water rushing in, there's panic,
and Olympia can't get her seatbelt unbuckled. I still was
in the plane because I was trapped, she says.
Speaker 6: Her son helped her get unbuckled. Then, she says, she
jumped in the water, not knowing how to swim. She
flapped her feet until her family pulled her onto a
life raft, where she and the other passengers watched as
the plane went under.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you can't swim, Like what else? Right?
Speaker 4: And can you imagine watching that plane just sink into
the ocean.
Speaker 3: That would be shocking.
Speaker 4: Mind blowing. But somehow, against the odds, all eleven people
survived the crash itself, which is definitely miracle number one, right, Yeah.
And then on top of that, Ian Nixon is able
to get everyone out of the sinking plane and onto
a small life raft. But this is only the beginning,
because now these people are floating out in the middle
of the Atlantic on a little round yellow life raft
with no communication, Oh my gosh, like.
Speaker 2: No sunes, no radios.
Speaker 4: Nothing, no, And they have no idea if anyone's even
heard the pilot's distress calls. Because the radios have gone
out before they even crash, and the waves are starting
to rock. They're in rough water, a storm is brewing.
These people have absolutely no guarantee that anyone is going
to find them. And I think sometimes movies have given
us unrealistic expectations about search and rescue, because we imagine
somebody immediately notices a missing aircraft and helicopters magically a
pair overhead. But the Atlantic Ocean is enormous and finding
a small life raft in open water is incredibly difficult.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of last week's episode.
Speaker 5: We talked a lot about how hard it is to
find someone in the water. Yeah, the ocean is so massive.
I mean, I'm sure these people are in for a
long wait. Yeah, exactly. This ordeal is far from over. Unfortunately.
Speaker 4: In fact, five hours pass and the weather keeps getting worse.
The swells keep getting bigger, thunderstorms are moving in, threatening
to create like the perfect conditions for a tragedy. The
swells are just getting bigger and bigger, and meanwhile the
raft is just drifting further and further away. From where
anyone expects him to be. And this is where you
really see God's hand in this story, because the nine
hundred and twentieth Rescuing of the US Air Force Reserve,
an elite unit, is already airborne on a training mission,
so when they get the call, they are immediately redirected.
Speaker 8: What's even more incredible here is that the nine hundred
and twentieth Rescuing is strained specifically in search and rescue.
This is an elite unit and they just happen to
be training fifteen minutes from where the crash landing took place.
Speaker 5: Wow, fifteen minutes and this massive ocean. It's crazy they
were so close by, it really is. But wait, so
you said that they had been out in the water
for five hours. So if this Air Force crew is
only fifteen minutes away, yeah, how do you explain that?
Speaker 4: Okay, so I had the same question. And geographically they're
only fifteen minutes away, but that doesn't mean that they
know where to look. And even though they have a
general idea, they're still trying to find a small yellow raft,
probably the size of a dining room table, across thousands
of miles of open ocean.
Speaker 5: So nearby doesn't necessarily mean easy to find right not
even hard to find.
Speaker 4: But having the air force nearby does mean that they
can start searching right away.
Speaker 6: Gotcha on the water, Everyone quickly got onto a life raft.
The plane sank as they waded through rough weather, not
knowing if help was on the way.
Speaker 4: During all of this, Olympia is praying for rescue for hours.
She's just praying and pleading with God, and even though
she has no idea that anyone is looking for them,
she's trying to stay calm and have faith. And then
the pilot ian makes a bold and faithful declaration. He
says to everyone on the raft, within ten minutes, someone
will come for us. And then a few minutes later,
one of the passengers says, hold on, did you hear something.
Everyone looks up, and finally they see a helicopter in
the distance, and then at last it stops and is
hovering overhead, and everyone is just overwhelmed with gratitude.
Speaker 8: Oh, when I see the helicopter, that's when I release.
Speaker 4: I say, oh, thank you.
Speaker 7: Jesus says, we get saved.
Speaker 4: He gets saved.
Speaker 7: We get see it.
Speaker 2: I would be doing that too. I would be saying
thank you Jesus.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm sure that was just such a.
Speaker 4: Relief just to see now I know, and it's amazing
that they've been found. But finding everyone is only half
the battle now, because now the helicopter has to get
everyone out of the water. They immediately drop extra survival
equipment and rafts and begin pulling survivors out of the ocean.
Speaker 7: Once we found there's eleven, our media concern was do
we have the weight in space take eleven people on board?
Speaker 3: Interesting?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And because the water is so rough, it's taking
them longer than they expected. And as they're pulling people
out of the water, the helicopter fuel system begins sounding
an alarm. It needs to leave now.
Speaker 6: The Coastguard had five minutes left of fuel, faced with
leaving passengers if they couldn't get them all.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the helicopter has already spent ninety minutes hoisting
people from the water. And to be clear, what they
mean by five minutes left of fuel is that they've
reached what is referred to as bingo fuel, which means
that if they don't leave within five minutes, they will
not have enough fuel to get back to land, and
not only that, but the weather is getting way worse.
And again, this is an elite unit and fortunately they
specialize in this type of difficult rescue, and these are
heroes who are not about to give up.
Speaker 7: The crew air dropping survival kits and executing this challenging
operation with limited fuel, hoisting eleven people to safety, completing
the rescue with only five minutes of fuel left before
needing to return to Florida.
Speaker 2: Wow, so they got everyone on board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's truly miraculous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they get everybody. I don't know how the helicopter
did it. Sorry if you don't get that joke language,
go check out our social media. But yeah, Once the
last survivors hoisted onto the helicopter, they fly back to Florida,
where emergency crews are waiting. Everyone from the plane crash
is taken to medical facilities where they're checked out and amazingly,
none of their injuries are life threatening.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: I'm sure that they will need some time to heal
emotionally after such a traumatic experience, but absolutely, But I'm
sure they're also all so grateful.
Speaker 4: So back on land, so grateful, and after this incredible rescue,
several people acknowledge that this has to be a miracle
from God. Even members of the elite units say it.
So here's one of the air force pilots talking about it.
Speaker 6: I've not known anyone to survive ditching in the ocean
from what I've seen.
Speaker 4: I mean, for all those people to survive is pretty miraculous.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't know the stats on ditching, but
there's like a lot of things in the story that
had to go right, not just.
Speaker 4: That, Yeah, exactly what I thought. Yeah, So okay, Emily,
here's where the story takes a really bizarre term though,
you're not going to see this one coming. But after
the rescue, investigators eventually began looking into why the plane
crashed and who the survivors were from the plane, and
they discover something shocking. Apparently one of the survivors is
now accused of participating in a large drug trafficking conspiracy.
What yeah, okay, seriously, And to be clear, these allegations
are still part of an ongoing investigation, but according to reporting,
this wasn't small scale trafficking either. Court documents alleged connections
to large cocaine shipments moving through the Bahamas. Again, what
do I know, Okay, stick with me here. They continue
this investigation and reportedly discover something else, a bag containing
approximately thirty thousand dollars in Bahamian currency.
Speaker 5: Okay, how did they find a bag if the plane
sank in the ocean.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 3: I had the same question.
Speaker 4: And according to reports, a fifty eight year old man
named Jonathan Eric Gardner was found with three phones and
a crossbody bag that contained the money, and the complaint
said the money was labeled with the handwritten name of
a Bahamian politician who was allegedly connected to a planned
Bahamas bound shipment in November twenty twenty four involving nine
hundred to one thousand kilograms of cocaine from Columbia.
Speaker 3: Oh you're in trouble now. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the part about the politician was later redacted from
public record because it doesn't necessarily prove the politician was
guilty of anything. Okay, But now investigators start looking into
that politician, other political leaders start demanding answers, questions start
being asked publicly, and it looks like, beyond the innocent
lives that were saved like Olympia Aughton and her family,
a large drug trafficking ring may have been shut down
by this plane crash.
Speaker 5: Wow, Okay, you are right. I did not see that coming.
This was major plot twist, I.
Speaker 4: Know the same. When I found that out, I was
like what, I was like, are we in the same story? Yeah?
And I know the plane crash guys right? And I
keep coming back to thought over and over again, like,
if this plane doesn't crash, does any of this happen?
Speaker 3: Interesting? Okay?
Speaker 4: I think sometimes when we talk about miracles, we think
of them as just like a rescue or a survival. Yeah,
but as we've learned, miracles can be very nuanced.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Obviously we should be careful not to claim certainty where
we don't have it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: This is all under investigation still, but it is difficult
not to look at this story and wonder if there
aren't two miracles it took place. One miracle kept eleven
people alive, and another miracle may have saved even more
lives of the people who would have taken those tracks.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: God works in mysterious ways.
Speaker 4: He does, And I am certain Olympia's prayers were heard
and the prayers of the.
Speaker 3: Other passengers on that plane. Yeah, what a miracle. Yeah,
so interesting.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks everyone for joining us today. Our God is
a god of miracles and hopefully listening to this podcast
has helped you to realize that more and more. If
you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it, leave a review,
and make sure you subscribe to you don't miss a
single episode. Have a wonderful week. Everyone, a's eleven of us.
I'm eleven hours eleve a right. Thank God for that,
because that's America.
Speaker 3: That's a miracle. Amen.
Speaker 4: Thank you for joining us. If you have a miracle
to share, contact us at the Miracle files dot com
or find us on social media. We release new episodes
each Monday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, don't forget Miracle mondays.
Speaker 5: Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and YouTube for amazing
video content as well.
Speaker 4: Join us next time as we discover more of God's miracles,
and don't forget to look for His light in your
own lives