MIAMI , A Miami family is pleading for help locating four relatives whose small plane vanished Monday while flying from the Bahamas to South Florida, prompting a joint search by Bahamian and U.S. forces.
The U.S. Coast Guard is assisting the Royal Bahamas Defence Force in looking for the aircraft, the Coast Guard said in a statement on X. As of 5 p.m. Monday, the Defence Force said its search had “yielded negative results.”
The passengers were identified by family as pilot Mario Lamar, 80, his wife Lili Lamar, 79, and two of their grandchildren, 28-year-old Sofia Sosa and 22-year-old Christian Sosa. They had spent Labor Day weekend at the family’s longtime vacation home on Great Harbour Cay, according to niece Silvia Larrieu.
The family grew worried when the group text went silent. Sofia had sent a message letting relatives know they were flying home, Larrieu said , the last anyone heard from her. Hours later, her phone stopped responding.
Relatives then tracked the plane on FlightAware and discovered something was wrong. The Piper PA-34 Seneca, a six-seat aircraft, was last seen on radar around 11 a.m., when the plane’s speed rapidly shifted up and down. Its altitude dropped from roughly 10,000 feet to 3,700 feet in just three minutes, and the plane’s path looped in a circle before the data cut out entirely.
“They’ve spent their whole life going there. That’s like their second home. They were coming home.”
Larrieu said the recording shows the plane crossing rough weather near the north end of Andros Island, where the search is now centered. That rough weather kept Bahamian forces from launching the search right away, she added.
Mario Lamar was a well-trained pilot with years of experience who kept the plane in “pristine” shape and had all required safety gear on board, according to his niece.
Another relative, the Lamars’ son, has already flown out to Andros to rent a boat and help look for the missing family.
“Please help. I ask anybody out there, if you can help with search and rescue efforts, we would greatly appreciate it. We need to bring them home.”
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