SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) – A missing pilot and plane have been recovered off the coast of Bryan County.
Back on May 6, the U.S. Coast Guard announced rescue crews were searching for a possible downed aircraft about 20 miles southeast of Wassaw Island. They suspended the search that Friday night “pending new information.”
No new details have been released by the Coast Guard since then.
According to Bryan County Coroner Bill Cox, the pilot’s body was recovered the following Friday afternoon. He identified the pilot as Edwin Farr, of Lexington, South Carolina. He was 67.
A flight-tracking site shows the plane Farr was piloting took off from Whiteplains Airport in Lexington around 7:30 a.m. on May 6 and was in the air for roughly an hour and a half before going down in the ocean.
A week later, Farr’s body was recovered about 18 miles off the coast of Bryan County, according to Lt. Eric Gaustad with the local sheriff’s office.
The plane, a single-engine Cirrus SR22, wasn’t recovered until Thursday.
“Another company went out and recovered the body. Then, they marked the plane for us and we were hired to go out and recover the plane from the bottom of the ocean,” explained Jim Givens of Sea Tow Savannah.
He said the process took a considerable amount of time, as the plane itself was 62 feet underwater and tides halted the tow for roughly six hours.
“You can’t tow these very fast because they’re fragile,” Givens said. “So we towed it at about 2 knots (roughly 2.3 mph). It just takes a long time.”
The roughly 21-mile-long tow ended late Thursday morning at Halfmoon Marina in Liberty County. Givens said an airplane recovery company took over from there.
Farr’s remains were taken to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Crime Lab in Pooler. Cox said his cause of death remains under investigation.