A pilot and her son had to swim to shore after their light plane landed in the sea, reports the New York Post. The pilot, Michelle Yeats, was flying back to Perth, Australia, with her son, Jake, 15, when the engine shut off close to 5 p.m. Reports say the mother and her son came from

“viewing the solar eclipse in Western Australia’s north.” 

The woman said the plane began acting strange, and she then ordered Jake to send a mayday and made the decision to attempt a water landing. Yeats informed ABC that she told her son,

“Mate, we’ve just had [an] 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,’”

she added. 

The woman revealed that although she has been trained to do the landing several times, she never expected to actually do one. 

“I was only at 1,500 feet, 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,”

the commercial pilot expressed. 

She continued,

“Then Jake got the door open really quickly and we just got out as it was going down… We were just standing on the wings … I was just thinking, we’re going to have to swim.”

Luckily, bystanders on Leighton Beach swam out in an effort to get them back to shore. Officials said most of the plane was under water and only a small fraction of the aircraft was above the sea. 

The mother and son received a check-up by an ambulance. 

#Clique, what are your thoughts?