One Santa Barbara Survivor in Panama Plane Crash

The news, by now, has been told by media all over the planet, even reaching to top of the Google News reports on Christmas Day. A plane crash on Sunday, December 23, in Panama killed Santa Barbara County residents Michael Klein, 37, a whiz-kid-turned-hedge fund-managing millionaire who owned the Islas Secas resort; his daughter Talia, a 13-year-old Crane Country Day School student; and their Panamanian pilot Edwin Lasso, 23, who was at the helm of the Cessna 172 when it went down. The sole survivor was Francesca “Frankie” Lewis, a 12-year-old Crane student who was found by a team of rescuers wandering the jungles near the crash site. Lewis had broken arm and hypothermia, according to the Associated Press, but told her father over the phone, “Hi daddy. See you soon.”

Yet to be explored is the state of aviation in Panama, a weather-whipped country that’s linked – at times perilously – by air travel, from the sandy, windswept islands like Islas Secas to the thick, wet, and jungled hillsides in the interior, such as those on Volc¡n Baru, where the Kleins’ plane went down. I visited Panama last summer, and traveled throughout the isthmus mostly through the air, hitting Panama City, the San Blas Islands near Colombia, the Bocas del Toro Archipelago in the northwest near Costa Rica, and the quaint coffee town of Boquete, the volcano-side hamlet where the Lewis family and Kim Klein, Michael’s ex-wife and Talia’s mother, converged to learn about their respective relatives’ fates. All destinations were reached by air, and I noticed that small, propeller-powered planes are the preferred – and often only – method of travel to small country’s remote regions for tourists and locals alike.

The weather – which ranged from windy, rainy, and cloudy with thunder and lightning to sunny and crystal clear on a single flight – was variable, yet did not stop pilots from taking off once. That’s a testament to the country’s pilots, who are well-trained and professional, and to the efficiency of the aviation system. But it’s also a sign that the air above Panama is treated very much as a Wild West zone, where guts and bravado often win out over better judgment with the goal of keeping to a schedule and pleasing customers.