A 23-year-old Florida pilot swam away uninjured Saturday after ditching her family’s twin-engine plane in the Atlantic Ocean off Boca Raton when the landing gear failed and the right engine quit mid-flight.
Faith Tenkley was alone aboard the 1971 Piper PA-39, registered N40439, when she made the controlled water landing around 9:40 a.m. near South Beach Park. She had taken off from Page Field in Fort Myers shortly before 8:50 a.m. bound for South Bimini Airport in the Bahamas to pick up her parents, Chad and Lisa Tenkley.
Trouble began about 15 miles west of Boca Raton. Tenkley, a licensed pilot for four years who also flies commercially, first lost the landing gear and then the right engine. Air traffic control cleared her for Boca Raton Airport, but she judged a runway landing too risky. The plane still carried a heavy fuel load, and a hard touchdown with the gear down could have started a fire.
“After deciding a landing at Boca Raton Airport was not the safest option, I continued to the coast,”
Tenkley said in a statement.
“During the descent, my primary focus was ensuring the safety of everyone around me. I was able to navigate toward open water, successfully avoiding all nearby buildings, paddleboarders, and swimmers (as well as individuals using metal detectors). I am incredibly fortunate and relieved to share that I was able to swim away from this incident.”
Video recorded by a runner on the beach shows the aircraft flying low past buildings and people before settling onto the water roughly two miles east of the airport near 250 South Ocean Boulevard. The plane remained largely intact on impact, then gradually took on water until only the tail stayed visible.
A Boca Raton Ocean Rescue lifeguard reached Tenkley within about a minute. A fire-rescue boat followed. She was taken to a hospital as a precaution and released without reported injuries. Witnesses on the beach and in nearby boats described the landing as controlled and deliberate. One professional pilot on the shore said the aircraft stayed in one piece because the pilot “flew the airplane all the way down.”
The aircraft belongs to usoarflorida LLC, the Fort Myers aviation company operated by her father, Chad Tenkley, 56, who is also a licensed pilot. He later told reporters that flying runs in the family and that he was proud of how his daughter handled the emergency. Her sister, Ashlee Tenkley, called the outcome a miracle.
Federal Aviation Administration crews recovered the plane the next day and moved it to Silver Palm Park. The FAA is investigating the mechanical failures that forced the ditching. Tenkley has declined most interviews beyond an initial conversation with a Fort Myers television reporter, saying her main concern remains the safety of those on the ground and in the water that morning.
