A 23-year-old Florida pilot swam away from her family's twin-engine Piper aircraft after ditching it in the Atlantic Ocean off Boca Raton on Saturday in an emergency landing captured on video by a beachgoer, according to Fox News.

Faith Tenkley, who has been flying for four years, maneuvered the aircraft around buildings and avoided paddleboarders before finding open water near the beach, she told Gulf Coast News. The plane came down at about 9:40 a.m. local time near 250 South Ocean Blvd.

A lifeguard reached Tenkley within about a minute of the landing, followed shortly by a Boca Raton Ocean Rescue fire boat, local authorities said. She was taken to the hospital as a precaution, and no injuries were reported, according to Boca Raton police.

The incident began roughly 15 miles west of Boca Raton, when Tenkley experienced mechanical trouble and initially planned to divert to Boca Raton Airport. The landing gear then malfunctioned, and with the right engine also failing, she opted to ditch the aircraft in the ocean rather than risk a hard runway landing that could ignite the recently refueled plane.

Witnesses described watching the aircraft descend slowly over the crowded beach before it touched down on the water largely intact. One beachgoer told WPBF she initially could not tell what was happening as the plane came into view overhead.

Video of the water landing and rescue also helped clear up online confusion about the incident, with Gulf Coast News reporting that some viewers had mistakenly assumed the pilot was male and had been rescued by a female surfer. Tenkley had been wearing a skirt over a bikini and removed it to swim to shore, leading onlookers to misidentify her role.

FlightAware lost track of the aircraft once it was over land, though the beachgoer's video captured the safe landing.

Source: Fox News