B.C. pilot tells remarkable survival story after small plane crash off Mexico
Global News
'It just felt like a sea monster reached up and grabbed us and pulled us in and slammed us forward,' Mike MacDonald said of the impact.
A B.C. pilot now has a remarkable survival story to tell after ditching his small plane in the ocean off the Baja Peninsula.
Mike MacDonald had been hired to fly over the Gulf of California with a marine biologist to look for wildlife last weekend.
“Our job is to go out there and spot the animals, identify them, mark them, mark their location, and which direction they’re headed,” he told Global News.
But about three hours into a four-hour tour, his engine suddenly quit and he realized he couldn’t make it to land.
“My colleague there thought I was playing some sick prank, but nope, this was the real deal and we had less than three minutes to prepare,” MacDonald told Global News.
After a few minutes of troubleshooting, he realized he was going to have to ditch the plane into severe swells a long way from shore.
“According to the app that we use for our tracking, it says that we were 61 knots, which works out to about 113 km/h when you hit the water,” MacDonald added.
“And it was a very sudden stop in fairly large swells with a little bit of white caps and some wind involved.”
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