Beachgoers at South Beach Park in Boca Raton got quite a Saturday morning surprise on August 22 when a small twin-engine plane glided past them and settled into the Atlantic Ocean just offshore. The pilot, 23-year-old Faith Tenkley, had been flying her family's Piper PA30 solo — bound roughly 150 miles from Fort Myers to pick up her parents in the Bahamas — when mechanical trouble struck about 15 miles off Boca Raton around 9:40 a.m.
Tenkley initially considered putting the plane down at Boca Raton's airport, but when she discovered her landing gear wasn't functioning, she thought better of it. A recently refueled plane with a hard runway landing and faulty gear could mean fire, so she made the call to ditch in the water instead. With the right-side engine also out, she threaded the aircraft between buildings and paddleboarders before finding a clear patch of ocean to set down on.
Witnesses described the descent as slow and controlled. A boater named Alexis Arizzi watched the plane touch down and immediately radioed the Coast Guard. A lifeguard reached the aircraft within a minute, followed closely by a Boca Raton Ocean Rescue fire boat. No one was hurt, though Tenkley — who has held a pilot's license for four years — was taken to a nearby hospital as a precaution, according to Boca Raton police.
An unidentified pilot who happened to be on the beach at the time praised Tenkley's airmanship, noting that the plane remaining in one piece was a sign she had followed the cardinal rule of emergency landings: fly the aircraft all the way down. One beachgoer, Maria Marks, summed up the scene perfectly — one moment she was putting sunscreen on her child, the next she was watching a plane land in the sea in front of her.
This story was first reported by the New York Post.
