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A young Florida pilot was able to swim away from a dramatic water landing in the Atlantic Ocean off Boca Raton on Saturday in a video captured by a beachgoer.
Faith Tenkley, 23, who has been a pilot for four years, maneuvered her family’s twin-engine Piper around buildings as she approached the coast and avoided paddleboarders before finding an open stretch of water next to the beach, she told Gulf Coast News. The plane made a smooth water landing at about 9:40 a.m. local time.
A lifeguard reached Tenkley within about a minute after the plane went down near 250 South Ocean Blvd., followed closely by a Boca Raton Ocean Rescue fire boat, according to local authorities.
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Video captured the dramatic moments of the water landing, the quick rescue and the aftermath of a shaken Tenkley sitting on the beach, looking out to the sinking plane fully intact.
Tenkley, who Fox News Digital has reached out to for comment, has declined media interviews outside of Gulf Coast News’ Peter Busch. He reported she wanted to clear up misinformation that it was a male pilot rescued by a female surfer instead of vice versa.
“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, detailing the conversation shortly after the water 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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.