The pilot who put a Page Field aeroplane into the Atlantic off Boca Raton on Saturday has been named, and she has given her own account of a broken landing gear, a failed engine and a decision that a full fuel load made the water safer than the runway

The pilot of the aeroplane that left Page Field in Fort Myers on Saturday morning and ended up in the Atlantic off Boca Raton has been named, and she has described what happened.

Faith Tenkley, 23, told Gulf Coast News, in reporting by Layza Pinero Resto, that she has been a pilot for four years and was flying her family's aeroplane to Bimini in the Bahamas to pick up her parents.

About fifteen miles west of Boca Raton, she said, she started having mechanical issues.

Her first plan was an emergency landing at the Boca Raton airport. Then, she said, the landing gear broke, and she judged that putting the aircraft down on a runway was a bad idea, because it still carried a lot of fuel and a hard landing could spark a fire.

By that point, she said, the right engine had failed, and she decided the water was safer.

She said she had to dodge buildings near the coast and paddleboarders before finding an empty spot next to the beach. The landing in the ocean was smooth, on her account, and a lifeguard reached her within a minute, with the fire rescue boat close behind.

Boca Raton police have said since Saturday morning that no injuries were reported and that the pilot was taken to hospital as a precaution.

The engine count does not match, and that is worth saying plainly

Tenkley's account describes a twin engine aeroplane whose right engine failed.

Saturday's reporting described a single engine one. CBS Miami, citing Boca Raton police, the United States Coast Guard and the FAA, called it a single engine plane, and WFLX was the only outlet on the day to give a make, describing a single engine Piper. This desk's own brief of Saturday afternoon carried the single engine description on that basis.

No registration number has been released, so there is no public record against which the aircraft type can be checked. No agency has corrected anyone. A first hand account from the person in the seat and a same day descriptor sourced to agencies are both ordinary sources, and here they disagree.

So the engine count is open. It will be settled by an FAA preliminary record, or by an NTSB record if the accident is classified as one, and neither exists yet.

What is still not known

No agency has stated a cause. The FAA has the inquiry, and WFLX reported late on Saturday, in a second day story by Cassandra Garcia and Emma Romano that does not carry the pilot's name or her account, that it remains unclear why the aeroplane was forced down on the water.

The aircraft's registration and its operator have not been released. Nobody has been accused of anything, and nothing in Tenkley's account is treated here as a finding about why the aeroplane failed.

What is behind this brief

No document. There is still no FAA report, NTSB entry or agency release on this accident, which is ordinary at this stage, and everything here is outlet reporting, named in each case.

The interview passages are all from Gulf Coast News, whose story this desk credited earlier in the day and which has since been updated with the pilot's account. Its published time is unchanged; its modified time moved late on Saturday evening, which is when the interview was added.

One claim still circulating in aggregated search results, that the pilot reported an electrical problem shortly after taking off from Boca Raton Airport, was rejected by this desk on Saturday and is rejected again. The pilot's own account has the flight departing Fort Myers with the trouble beginning fifteen miles west of Boca. The same search results also blend in coverage of a separate, earlier Boca Raton crash in which three people died. That is a different accident and nothing from it appears here.