WATCH: Small plane PLUNGES into ocean
A small aircraft went down in the Atlantic just off a Boca Raton beach, sending a lifeguard sprinting into the surf moments later to help the pilot back to safety. Police said the pilot was alone in the single-engine plane, and no injuries were reported.
A 23-year-old Florida pilot survived a tense ocean landing off Boca Raton on Saturday, swimming away from the aircraft after the dramatic scene was captured on video by a person on the beach.
Faith Tenkley, who has been flying for four years, told Gulf Coast News she guided her family’s twin-engine Piper around nearby buildings as she came toward the shoreline, avoided paddleboarders in the water and then aimed for a clear area beside the beach. The plane touched down smoothly in the ocean at about 9:40 a.m. local time.
Local officials said a lifeguard reached Tenkley roughly a minute after the plane went down near 250 South Ocean Blvd. A Boca Raton Ocean Rescue fire boat arrived shortly afterward.
Video showed the plane’s tail protruding from the water after the landing. (SCHD STAN/Craig Sutton via Storyful)
Footage from the beach showed the tense sequence unfold: the water landing, the rapid rescue response and Tenkley afterward on the sand, visibly shaken as she looked out at the largely intact aircraft sinking offshore.
Tenkley, whom News Outlet has contacted for comment, has declined media interviews other than with Gulf Coast News’ Peter Busch. Busch said she spoke with him in part to correct false claims circulating online that a male pilot had been rescued by a female surfer, rather than the other way around.
“One of the reasons Faith wanted to talk to me was to clear up misinformation she saw online about the pilot being a guy and a ‘surfer girl’ rescuing him,” Busch wrote on Facebook, describing their conversation soon after the ocean landing.
“Faith was wearing a long skirt over a bikini. She took off the skirt to swim to shore. People on the beach saw a woman in a bikini and assumed she was a surfer helping the male pilot.”
The plane was spotted flying low before crashing into the water. (SCHD STAN/Craig Sutton via Storyful)
Tenkley, who was the only person on board, had departed Page Field in Fort Myers and was headed to Bimini in the Bahamas to pick up her parents, she told Gulf Coast News.
She was taken to a hospital as a precaution and no injuries were reported, according to Boca Raton police.
About 15 miles west of Boca Raton, Tenkley began experiencing mechanical issues and initially planned to divert to Boca Raton Airport. But the landing gear then malfunctioned, and she feared a hard runway landing could ignite the recently refueled aircraft.
The pilot of the plane was rescued shortly after plunging into the ocean. (SCHD STAN/Craig Sutton via Storyful)
By that point, the plane’s right engine had also failed, leaving Tenkley to make a rapid decision to ditch the aircraft in the ocean rather than risk a landing on land.
Witnesses watched the low-flying plane descend over the busy beach before it landed in the water.
“One second I’m spraying sunscreen on my kid. The next I’m looking up and saying, ‘Is that supposed to be happening?’” beachgoer Maria Marks told WPBF.
Another witness, Alexis Arizzi, told the New York Post the aircraft made a slow descent and “delicately landed” on the water. A pilot at the beach praised Tenkley’s handling of the emergency, noting the plane remained in one piece.
FlightAware lost track of the flight over land, but the safe water landing was chronicled in the onlooker’s video.
