Shocking footage has emerged of the moment a plane came crashing into the water during a hair-raising emergency landing with a mother and son on board.
Michelle Yeats was flying back to Perth with her 15-year-old son Jake after viewing the solar eclipse in Western Australia’s north on Thursday when the plane’s engine cut out near North Fremantle about 5pm.
Footage shows the moment beachgoers realised the plane was plummeting towards the ocean before it skidded to a halt with a massive splash, sending debris flying.
Ms Yeats said the plane started to behave strangely, prompting her to send a may day and make a snap decision to try for a water landing off Leightons Beach.
“Mate, we’ve just had engine failure, we’re going to have to land on the beach,” she told the ABC she said to her son.
“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 okay.’”
Ms Yeats, a commercial pilot, said she had trained for such a landing “many, many times”, but did not ever expect to have to do it for real.
“I was only at 1500 feet, I didn’t have much time to react so I just sent out a may day 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,” Ms Yeats said.
The plane came down about 30-50m off Leightons Beach.
“Then Jake got the door open really quickly and we just got out as it was going down,” she said.
“We were just standing on the wings … I was just thinking, we’re going to have to swim.”
People on Leighton Beach swam out to help them get back to shore.
Police said most of the plane was submerged in the water, with only a small part of it visible above the waterline.
Both Ms Yeats and Jake were checked over by St John WA.