SVG Air plane disappears – Pilot, passenger missing

DAY 1

Sunday evening November 19

The phone rang at 6:34 pm, it was Rasheed Ibrahim calling his mother, Nicha Branker (De Silva), to say he was about to leave Canouan, please pick him up at the airport.

She drove to the airport and kept her engine running in front of the C.K. Greaves Supermarket as she would normally do, expecting him to walk straight through the airport, dirty clothes in hand, and meet her.{{more}}

The plane should have arrived at about 6:55 pm but by just after 7:00 pm she felt something had to be wrong.

She went to the SVG Air counter but the office was closed.

She thought that because it was not a commercial flight that perhaps it went straight to the hangar, so she drove to the hangar and spoke with some employees who said that they did not see Rasheed and all their planes had come in.

She then called the pilot of the last SVG Air that the employees said landed and enquired but he said he did not bring Rasheed over.

She was then convinced that something had gone dreadfully wrong and telephoned one of the owners of SVG Air.

That person jokingly thought she was over-reacting but on further investigation he recognized something was wrong.

It was now about 8:30 pm.

She called a high ranking police officer who was a friend and asked for help, asking him to speak to the coastguard to organise a search.

The alarm was triggered through her persistence, and all the relevant authorities were notified and a search and rescue operation got underway after 9:30 pm.