A pilot and flight instructor are thankful to be alive after a scary situation earlier this week that saw their plane plunge into the waters off Virginia Key.
“We’re at a thousand feet over Key Biscayne, we’re coming back southbound from Miami Beach, next thing you know we start hearing engine noises,” said Seraj Abdelhameed, the flight instructor of the plane.
Abdelhameed described the moments before he made an emergency landing in the plane.
“We got our doors open, we got ready for impact and we avoided a little bit of rocks and we went into the water,” he said.
Abdelhameed said the single engine failed in the Cessna Skyhawk he was flying around 7 p.m. Thursday, as he was with a flight student heading from Miami Executive Airport to Miami Beach.
His student, Mohammed Alrafaei, said the moment was scary and the men are lucky.
“It’s a scary situation, but I’m glad I survived and that’s it,” Alrafaei said.
Neither of the men was injured. They were assigned by ocean rescue but didn’t go to the hospital. Alrafaei says he wants to continue to train to be a pilot.
“Yeah, I want to finish what I started,” he said.
Both men grateful to have survived what could have ended tragically.
“I would say were very lucky,” Abdelhameed said. “We were going to go to the Everglades to the southwest practice area, but i’m still trying to comprehend it all.”