A woman has been praised for her quick-thinking after she and her son swam to safety after being forced to ditch their light plane in the sea off a Perth beach.
Michelle Yeates, 45, and her 15-year-old son had to swim to shore after the engine stalled on their Piper Aircraft Corp and they crashed into the sea off Leighton Beach in North Fremantle.
Ms Yeates, a commercial pilot, sent out a mayday call only minutes before being forced to bring the plane down in the water about 50 metres from the beach.
“I was only at 1500 feet (460 metres). I didn’t have much time to react so I just sent out a mayday to the tower and then just turned around and landed on the water – I tried to get as close to the beach as I could without hitting anybody,” she said.
“You train to do that sort of thing, so I’ve trained for that many, many times.”
Witnesses on the beach saw the emergency unfold.
“There was a bang when the plane hit the water,” one told The West newspaper.
“It was pretty loud and scary. I’m still pretty shaken it was really unexpected.”
According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Yeates is a commercial pilot with Rottnest Air Taxis. In a post seven months ago, she said she’d made the leap to aviation after 25 years working in the mining industry.
She and teenage son Jacob were flying into Perth’s Jandakot Airport after watching Thursday’s solar eclipse in Exmouth.
Their plane crashed just after 5pm (local time) on Thursday. By Friday morning, it was mostly submerged.
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Mother and son in lucky escape from ditched plane
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Ms Yeates said she tried to land at the right angle so the plane wouldn’t flip over. She told the ABC she said to her son: “Mate, we’ve just had engine failure, we’re going to have to land on the beach”.
“He was like ‘For real, are you for real?’. I said, ‘Hopefully this is the most exciting thing that’s going to happen in your life and we’re going to be OK’.”
Jacob got the door open quickly and the pair got out as the plane was going down.
“They were both able to exit the plane and swim to shore,” police said in a statement.
They said Ms Yeates did an “exceptional job” bringing the plane down and she and Jacob were lucky to escape uninjured.
The pair were taken to hospital for observation
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating the incident.
-with AAP
