Captain Errol Stewart, chief executive officer and director of operations at the school, remembers the young pilot as a "'conscious' fellow, who knew exactly what he wanted to do".

Flying career

Twenty-five-year old Stuart Brown attended the flight school between April and November 2005 before migrating to the United States to further his flying career.

According to an article in the Miami Herald, Brown's 1997 single-engine Cessna 172R, owned by the Pelican Flight Training Centre where he was a student, collided with a 1979 twin-engine Piper 44 sometime on Saturday, December 6. The planes then crashed into the Florida Everglades in western Broward County.

Authorities later found the bodies of Brown and his passenger, Edson Jefferson, who was also from Jamaica, the following day. It is unclear what led to the collision.

"It's very sad," Stewart told The Gleaner yesterday. "We have lost someone in our industry who had great potential."

Stewart said school records show that Brown maintained a 95 per cent average before leaving for the US.

"We always follow up on our students and, the last I heard, he was doing well," Stewart added.

Reports in the overseas press are that Brown had aspirations of flying for his home country's national airline, Air Jamaica.