Number 6: Half Moon Bay Landing In August 2019, a small plane made an unorthodox
landing off the California coast, leaving its two passengers miraculously mostly unharmed
and able to document the entire incident.
David Lesh was piloting his Beechcraft Bonanza plane when trouble struck over Half Moon Bay
at 3,400 feet above the Pacific, putting Lesh and his female acquaintance in grave peril.
The tiny craft’s motor petered out, leaving the pair with no other choice but to crash
land in the ocean.
Amazingly, the plane skimmed the surface of the water for several hundred feet before
crashing into the waves, leaving both Lesh and his passenger unharmed.
A fellow pilot and friend, Owen Leipelt, circled above, calling mayday and filming the scene
below.
Unfortunately for the pair, they’d landed in jellyfish-infested waters but managed to
survive by treading water until the Coast Guard came.
Lesh even got a few snaps of his own, using a waterproof phone to document the incident
in real-time.
The crash culprit?
Lesh swears that his woes were caused by a batch of bad gasoline that left the Beechcraft
Bonanza drained of fuel far above the seas, but some suspect that he stalled the plane
intentionally.
The flamboyant Lesh, founder of Virtika outerwear company, has a history of daredevil antics
and wild behavior.
To this day, Lesh denies that it was nothing but a crazy accident.
Number 5: Divi Divi Air Flight 014 On October 22, 2009, the Divi Divi Air Flight
014 was just making a quick jump between Curacao’s Hato International Airport and Bonaire’s
Flamingo International Airport when she landed in the Caribbean Sea.
The Divi Divi Air Flight 014 was a small plane carrying only 1 pilot and 9 passengers, and
had flown successfully for 36 years without any major incidents.
Tragically, that incredible track record was halted in 2009.
The cause of the accident was deemed to be engine failure, and the pilot figured out
that something was wildly wrong very quickly.
10 minutes after Divi Divi Air Flight 014 departed, the starboard engine started to
fail, but the pilot, Robert Mansell, decided to carry on.
After all, the distance between the two destinations was a mere 24 miles.
How bad could it be?
In retrospect; very bad.
Mansell let the officials at Flamingo International know that he was cruising on one engine and
carried on across the vast Caribbean.
Minutes later, the craft started to dip in altitude, swiftly heading towards the sea
at 200 feet per minute, coming to rest roughly 3 miles west of the island.
Fortunately, Mansell was prepared for the worst, and all of the passengers were wearing
their life vests at the time of impact and were able to exit the plane and be rescued
without incident.
Unfortunately for Mansell, he lost consciousness during the descent and went down with the
plane.
Number 4: Tuninter Flight 1153
Tuninter Flight 1153 was just making a routine trip between Bari, Italy, and Djerba Tunisia
when disaster struck several thousand feet above the Mediterranean Sea in August 2005.
The plane made it remarkably close to shore, only about 18 miles off the coast of Palermo,
when it finally gave in to its watery fate due to fuel exhaustion.
A mere mechanical miscalculation, putting fuel quantity indicators designed for a smaller
version of the aircraft into the Tuninter Flight 1153, was the ultimate issue.
As a result, Tuninter, which had a stellar track record until that point, had its first
fatal crash in 14 years.
The pilot, 45-year old Chafik Al Gharbi, had 7,182 flight hours on the job, and was intimately
familiar with the craft, but when the catastrophic fuel shortage happened, he lost it and started
panicking.
Instead of immediately employing safety measures, Al Gharbi began to pray, which cost the passengers
and crew valuable time.
Eventually, Al Gharbi was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for his part in the disaster.
When the flight dove into the Mediterranean, it split into three pieces, 23 miles asea
of Palermo International Airport.
The impact alone, a staggering 145 miles per hour, was enough to decimate the craft.
Of the 4 crew members, one perished, but 15 of the 35 passengers lost their lives that
day.
The vast majority of the surviving passengers were seated near the back of the plane, a
fortuitous fact that probably saved their lives when the wretched craft nosedived and
floundered in the ocean.
Number 3: Flying Tiger 923 On a moonless night in September 1962, the
Flying Tiger 923 found its final resting place in the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean, thousands
of miles away from any discernible shore.
She was traveling to Germany when suddenly the engines ignited, bursting into a fiery
inferno that made it impossible for the Flying Tiger 923 to finish her journey, a military
mission.
The plane carried 8 crew members and 68 passengers, an assorted mixture of military paratroopers
and civilians, and finally came to rest 500 miles off the coast of Shannon, Ireland.
The bitterly cold and inhospitable waters of the North Atlantic and the roughness of
the seas on that fateful night made sudden doom a certain possibility… but there was
a light at the end of the tunnel for some.
Incredibly, 45 passengers were rescued from the terrible seas, and 3 out of the 8 crew
members also lived to see another day.
The rest were lost to the tumbling waves or died of hypothermia.
Today, the Flying Tiger 923 lives in infamy and many books and stories have been written
about the military plane that met her final match in the dark waters of the North Atlantic.
Number 2: US Airways Flight 1549
US Airways Flight 1549, also known as “The Miracle on the Hudson,” is the stuff of
legends.
On January 15, 2009, it was making a quick leap between New York’s LaGuardia Airport
and Charlotte, North Carolina, when the plane ran afoul of another type of flying object;
a rogue flock of Canadian Geese.
The winged animals smashed into the plane, causing its engine to short circuit while
it was high above the waves.
Miraculously, pilot Chesley Sullenberger made a smooth as glass landing right on the Hudson,
saving himself, his crew, and the 155 people who were aboard the plane.
Everyone was rescued, and there were very few serious injuries.
Sullenberger did such an incredible job that the National Transportation Safety Board deemed
his landing “the most successful ditching in aviation history” and determined that
he had no other choice but to land in Hudson after his run-in with the birds.
Both Sullenberger and his flight attendants were given Master’s Medals of the Guild
of Air Pilots and Air Navigators for their roles in the feat, especially keeping the
passengers calm while disaster seemed inevitable.
Sullenberger’s cool demeanor under tremendous pressure might be due to his time in the United
States Air Force, where he operated as a fighter pilot.
He also had 19,663 hours of flight experience under his belt.
It’s pretty clear that if anyone could have made the miraculous landing on the Hudson,
it was Sullenberger.
Number 1: Pan Am Flight 6 In 1956, Pan Am Flight 6 was conducting a
flight around the world when it was forced to land in the Pacific Ocean.
The cosmopolitan flight had departed Philadelphia on October 12, with an ambitious itinerary;
to fly to Europe and Asia on a multi-country jaunt.
It cleared the eastern world and was on its way back to the United States when it floundered
off the coast of Hawaii on the last leg towards San Francisco.
Engine failure is ultimately what took Pan Am Flight 6 down, as the plane lost power
at 21,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.
Trouble started in the first engine, as it started to overspeed.
To compensate, pilot George Haaker tried to employ the aircraft’s flaps and reduce power,
as well as feather the propeller.
When that failed, the engine started speeding up out of control, and Captain Richard Ogg
made an executive decision to cut off power to engine 1.
Although that worked, the propeller was still working overtime, increasing the plane’s
drag exponentially and setting it up for a catastrophic crash.
As the propeller whirred, the plane gobbled up fuel, and other engines started to flounder
as well.
All of this meant that the crew didn’t have enough fuel to get to San Francisco, and horrifyingly,
not enough to get back to Honolulu either.
That left just one option; an ocean landing.
Captain Ogg was able to hold off until daylight, deducing that a water landing would be far
more plausible while the sun was up.
His gamble paid off, and he prepped the crew and passengers for their final descent.
Ogg was also able to alert a local vessel to pick up the crew and passengers once they’d
hit the sea.
His smart thinking and piloting ability helped guide Pan Am Flight 6 into the surface of
the sea without one single casualty, making his heroic story one for the ages.
A combination of careful planning, knowledge of the waters, and ample preparation enabled
Pan Am Flight 6 to complete its whirlwind global journey with a bang, but not a single
death to report.
Thanks for watching!
Would you rather have a huge tussle with a cranky flock of Canada Geese mid-air like
Chesley Sullenberger or have to contend with swarms of jellyfish while waiting for rescue
in Half Moon Bay, California?
Let us know in the comments section below.