Mother, teen son swim to shore after emergency plane landing at sea

A pilot and her teenaged son had moments to get out of their light plane when it ditched into the sea, before swimming to safety, in a hair-raising emergency.

Michelle Yeats was flying back to Perth, Australia with her 15-year-old son Jake after viewing the solar eclipse in Western Australia’s north when the plane’s engine cut out at about 5 p.m.

Yeats says the plane started to behave strangely, prompting her to send a mayday and make a snap decision to try for a water landing.

“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 OK.’”

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 1,500 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,” Yeats said.

The plane came down about 30-50 yards 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 Yeats and Jake were checked over by a local ambulance.