MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — A student pilot is being praised for how he handled an emergency situation when the single-engine aircraft he was flying Tuesday was forced to land in Sarasota Bay.
Bens Leche-Garcia, 25, who wants to become a commercial pilot, was attempting to land the plane onto one of the smaller runways at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport when he lost throttle control.
The plane he was flying belongs to Cirrus Aviation and the lead flight instructor said Leche-Garcia did exactly what he was trained to do.
"He followed the procedures, he even said 'I could still hear my instructors saying just in case, follow the water, just go to the water,'" said David Cattin, president and a lead flight instructor at Cirrus Aviation.
According to Cattin, Leche-Garcia had about 60 hours of flying time and was on his first solo flight during this particular training route. At the time of the emergency, Leche-Garcia had flown nearly 80 nautical miles to Sebring and was heading back to the airport.
"He was turning base-to-final, so about a mile or a mile and a half from the runway, he realized he couldn't make the runway and made the right decision to go for the bay and made a water landing," Cattin said.
Leche-Garcia landed the plane about 40 feet offshore in water that was three to five feet deep. Cattin said the shallowness of the bay as well as the pilot's calm, training and preparedness helped the situation from becoming much worse.
"We train for all the emergencies, we train constantly and it's not very often that you get to see it in action and in this case, we saw that he did the right thing all the way," he said.
"He was very apologetic initially, he thought he did something wrong, and we were like 'no-no you did great'. He thought he might have made a mistake but obviously not, he's done everything right," Cattin added.
A nearby neighbor brought Leche-Garcia to shore on a canoe and a tug boat pulled away the plane's wreckage.
According to the flight instructor, the pilot is home recovering and while he had no bruises or injuries from the emergency landing, he was worried about something else.
"He was really worried about telling his mom last night after she came back from work at 11 o'clock. He didn't know if he could tell her or wait till the next morning so she could sleep," Cattin said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is now leading the investigation into what caused the mechanical problem.
This latest emergency landing comes less than a week after another small plane landed on Bruce B Downs in Tampa. That pilot also walked away from the landing unharmed.
