Eight survivors -- including an infant and the pilot -- clutched one another, bobbing in two clusters for 80 minutes in the warm waters until two U.S. Coast Guard helicopters made a dramatic rescue, using aerial baskets to pluck them from the ocean.
The girl was dead on arrival at Rand Memorial Hospital in nearby Freeport, emergency room physician Dr. Ferdinand Fermo said. An airline official said a Bahamian woman was found dead at the scene.
Authorities were not releasing the names of the passengers late Sunday.
Coast Guard rescuers described finding two groups of survivors about 200 yards apart. They dropped a raft from a helicopter.
"We got it close enough in between the two groups of people so that one group was able to swim to it," rescue swimmer Ryan White told NBC-Ch6.
The second group, a family, had difficulty reaching the raft.
"They were in shock," White said. "The infant was the one that was the most calm. I was surprised by that."
"When we got on scene, the mother was holding the child up," said Lt. Cmdr. Mike Eagle, "with the father and the pilot supporting them. They only had a couple of little arm floaties basically keeping them afloat."
The pilot suffered a head injury, the rescuers said.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive at the crash site today. Bahamian officials requested the NTSB take the lead role in the investigation, NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm said.
The twin-engine Cessna 402C, operated by Air Sunshine, was carrying a pilot and nine passengers -- five adults and four children -- when it took off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at 2:35 p.m.
An hour and six minutes into the flight, the pilot sent out a mayday call reporting he had lost his right engine. The plane went down two miles off shore and nine miles from its destination, Treasure Cay Airport on Abaco Island.
The mayday call was picked up by another plane headed from the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale. The pilot relayed the call to the Federal Aviation Administration, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer 3rd Class Anastasia Burns.
"We had another aircraft in the area, circling the area," said Moe Adili, director of operations for Air Sunshine, which is based in Fort Lauderdale. The two pilots were able to communicate, and Air Sunshine directed the second pilot to stay and monitor the situation until help arrived.
"We counted 10 heads when we were at 1,000 feet," Adili said.
Bahamian agents also dispatched three marine rescue boats, but the Coast Guard arrived first, Adili said.
The Coast Guard was on the scene at about 4:10 p.m., Burns said. In little more than an hour, nine of the 10 people on board had been loaded into helicopters out of Clearwater and Miami. The dead woman was pulled out of the water by the crew of a passing boat.
Air Sunshine was trying unsuccessfully Sunday night to reach the woman's relatives . Adili said she was married to a U.S. citizen and her father lives in the Bahamas.
Adili identified the children on the plane by weight. He said one infant, who survived, had been weighed with its mother. The three other children weighed 35, 50, and 50 pounds.
Adili said he thought three families were on the charter flight because three last names were listed, as were three area codes for their contact information, including numbers in Orlando, Jacksonville, and western South Carolina.
The Cessna had never had any problems before, Adili said. It flew daily between Fort Lauderdale and Abaco Island. Air Sunshine has operated the 23-year-old plane for a decade.
"The plane made one flight this morning," Adili said, "and I believe it flew yesterday."
He said the plane was refurbished last year.
It was not the first fatal crash in the airline's 21-year history. In 1997, two people were killed when an Air Sunshine charter plane crashed in the Virgin Islands. That accident, at the time the airline's third in five years, caused the FAA to increase ramp and maintenance inspections of Air Sunshine's planes.
Staff Writer Ann W. O'Neill contributed to this story.
