A single engine plane that took off from Page Field in Fort Myers came down in the Atlantic off Boca Raton this morning, and the one person on board, the pilot, was pulled from the water without injury

A single engine plane that took off from Page Field in Fort Myers crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Boca Raton this morning. The pilot, the only person on board, was not injured.

The Boca Raton Airport Authority and the Boca Raton Police Department told Gulf Coast News that the aircraft departed Page Field and that an emergency was declared en route to its destination. The Airport Authority says the plane was cleared to land at South Bimini Airport in the Bahamas before it came down in the ocean near 250 South Ocean Boulevard.

Local 10, citing Boca Raton Fire Rescue and the Federal Aviation Administration, independently gives the same departure point and destination and puts the crash at about 10.25 this morning.

The pilot

There was one person on board, the pilot, and Boca Raton Ocean Rescue pulled the pilot from the water, according to the Airport Authority.

Boca Raton police say no injuries were reported and that the pilot was taken to hospital as a precaution. Boca Raton Fire Rescue told Local 10 the pilot was not injured.

The pilot has not been named by any agency.

The aircraft and the response

WFLX describes the aircraft as a single engine Piper. It is the only outlet read here that gives a make, and no registration number has been released.

CBS Miami reports that the Boca Raton Police Department marine unit and the United States Coast Guard were at the scene and that the FAA was en route.

Local 10 reports the plane was scheduled to be removed from the water on Sunday.

What is not known

No agency has said what the emergency was, and no cause has been reported by any source read here. None is suggested by this desk.

The pilot's name and age, the aircraft's registration and its operator have not been released. CBS Miami reported plainly that further details about how the crash happened were not immediately available.

An FAA preliminary record, and an NTSB record if the accident is classified as one, are the documents that will eventually carry the cause. Neither exists yet.

What is behind this brief

No document. There is no FAA report, NTSB entry or agency press release on this accident yet, which is ordinary on the day of a general aviation accident. Everything here is outlet reporting of what named agencies said, and this brief names both the outlet and the agency in each case.

The fact that puts the story in this section, the departure from Page Field in Fort Myers, is carried by two outlets working independently: Gulf Coast News, sourced to the Boca Raton Airport Authority, and Local 10, sourced to Boca Raton Fire Rescue and the FAA.

One claim circulating in aggregated search results, that the pilot reported an electrical problem shortly after taking off from Boca Raton Airport, appears in none of the four reports read here, contradicts the two that name Page Field as the departure point, and is not used. The same result set also mixed in coverage of a separate and earlier Boca Raton crash in which three people died. That is a different accident and nothing from it appears in this brief.

Update, August 22, 2026, 11.35 p.m. ET

The pilot has since been named and has given her own account, and one detail in it does not match this brief.

Faith Tenkley, 23, told Gulf Coast News that she was flying her family's aeroplane out of Fort Myers to Bimini to collect her parents, that trouble began about fifteen miles west of Boca Raton, that her landing gear broke, and that she chose the water over the runway because the aircraft still carried a lot of fuel. She described the aircraft as a twin engine one whose right engine had failed.

This brief says single engine, in its headline and its summary. That description came from CBS Miami, citing Boca Raton police, the Coast Guard and the FAA, and from WFLX, which called it a single engine Piper. No registration number has been released, so there is no public record to check the type against, and no agency has corrected anyone. The engine count is therefore open, and it is left standing here rather than quietly changed. This desk does not silently edit a published item.

The pilot's full account, and what is and is not settled, are in Faith Tenkley: pilot in Page Field plane crash tells her story.