Pilot Lands in Choppy Waters Off Connecticut, Calls 911

The pilot of a small plane that was about to crash managed to land it safely in the cool, choppy waters of Long Island Sound off Connecticut and call 911 to provide his precise coordinates before the aircraft sank, authorities said Monday. The Coast Guard pulled two people wearing lifejackets from the water shortly before 11am Sunday, about a half-hour after the plane went down a few miles off the coast of Branford, Connecticut, officials said. The survivors were treated for minor injuries and hypothermia symptoms and brought to a hospital, the Branford Fire Department said.

• The AP reports that the single-engine Piper PA-32-300 Cherokee Six took off from Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford, Connecticut, shortly before 10:14am and was in the air for about 12 minutes before it went down, according to the flight-tracking company FlightAware.

• About 10 minutes into the flight, the pilot declared an emergency and contacted air traffic controllers in New York, who directed them to try to land about 8 miles away at Tweed-New Haven Airport, according to Andrew King, a spokesperson for Avports, which manages Tweed-New Haven.
• Tweed-New Haven officials prepared a runway for an emergency landing. But air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, King said.
• Branford Fire Chief Thomas Mahoney said after the plane went into the water, the pilot used a cellphone to call 911 and report his plane crashed into Long Island Sound and was taking on water.

• Mahoney said dispatchers, who may have missed the first part of the call, initially believed it was a boat in distress. "I believe when he made the 911 call to us it was after the plane had already went in the water," Mahoney tells the Connecticut Post. "Because of the proximity to the cell tower, it was picked up and routed to our 911 center, so that shows that, you know, that system appropriately works."
• The aircraft was completely submerged when rescuers arrived. "We arrived shortly after the Coast Guard," Mahoney said. "The Coast Guard did a great job in responding to the area, retrieving the people out of the water before things got worse. And the pilot obviously did a really good job of landing the plane in choppy seas. Those outcomes don't always come out as well as this did."

(More plane crash stories.)