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| Botched Lake Landing |
 "I was just praying to Jesus," 67 year old Anthony Bencivenga told the Palm Beach Post. "I said, 'If I'm going to die, please drown me first before the alligators gets me.'"
Bencivenga had just flubbed a touch-and-go landing attempt on Lake Okeechobee in his home-built amphibious plane. He had owned the plane for two years but was still learning how to fly it, logging only 40 hours at the controls in that time. The mirror effect on the lake, an illusion that forms if you don't approach the water from the proper angle, got him.
"When you're high up in the air and looking down on the water, it's like looking in a mirror," he said. One of his pontoons struck the lake heavily and his hand was thrown off of the throttle when the plane spun.
His harness holding him in his seat somehow released and Bencivenga was thrown out of the door-less plane. "I landed down in the water. It [the plane] leveled itself off and came back toward me."
"It finally crashed in about four feet of water."
Bencivenga's neighbor and friend, Mike Bantum, out for a spin in his gyrocopter, watched the crash but didn't see Bencivenga's ejection. Bantum radioed for help and began the search for his friend. "I'm circling the crash for 15 minutes, waiting for this guy to come up," Bantum told the Palm Beach Post. "I said, 'Look, he's probably dead.'"
Bantum, not able to land his gyrocopter on water, headed to the airport to meet with officials but, on the way, saw something moving in the water - Bencivenga. Exhausted and without the energy to swim to shore, with rescuers on the shore with no boat, action had to be taken.
Bantum flew to a bass fishing boat and dropped down to get the boater's attention and wave him toward Bencivenga. "At first, I didn't know what he was doing," the fisherman, Richard Myers, told the Palm Beach Post. "Then I saw what looked like a boat overturned in the water."
By this point, Bencivenga had been treading water for nearly an hour. Too weak to climb into the boat himself, Myers pulled him in by the belt.
Bencivenga recovered and the only thing, besides some bruises, that was injured was his bank account to the tune of $65,000 for the plane.
The National Transportation Board has released a report stating the Bencivenga was at fault for the accident, something he freely admits. "I did everything a pilot shouldn't do," he said. "I paid a hell of a price to learn that lesson."
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