By LEANDRA ROLLE 

Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

ABACO businessman Troy Cornea was flying to Florida to visit family with his two beloved dogs yesterday morning when the engine of his single-engine Piper PA32 failed mid-air, forcing him to make a dramatic emergency landing in a marsh west of Treasure Cay.

Disaster struck when the plane’s engine died shortly after take-off, somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 feet, triggering the emergency he had mentally rehearsed “a thousand times.”

It was his first emergency landing in more than two decades of flying, and he said the mental drills he performed on every weekly flight may have saved his life.

“I fly that route every single week, and in my mind, I have practised ditching 1,000 times,” he told The Tribune hours after the incident. “Never knew I would have to implement it.”

Mr Cornea, who has been flying since 2000 and owns Wally’s Restaurant and Harbour View Marina, added: “Things went wrong when the engine quit, so that’s your first indication that obviously you have a problem and all attempts to restart the engine failed. I wasn’t that high, so I didn’t have a lot of time to come up with a game plan - I basically turned around and headed back to Marsh.”

Mr Cornea departed Leonard M Thompson International Airport around 10am en route to Stuart, Florida. He was flying alone, apart from the family’s dogs, Trapper and Scout.

Air traffic controllers advised him to attempt an emergency landing at Treasure Cay, but Mr Cornea rejected that option.

“I don’t like the landing options if you come short,” he said. “If you don’t make the airport, you’re in the pine forest, and that’s not a very good option to go down in a smaller plane.”

Instead, he stayed over the marshes and aimed for Marsh Harbour, before realising he would have to ditch the aircraft.

“So once I got to a low enough altitude, I just picked out the biggest spot that I thought I could land in, and that’s what we did,” he said.

Mr Cornea executed the emergency landing without injury. Police and defence force officers rescued him and his dogs, which emerged shaken but safe.

“I’m just happy the family pets survived, because that would have been terrible for the girls who were expecting to see their dogs,” he said.

He said he will keep flying. In fact, his second phone call — while still at the marshy landing site — was to his broker, asking him to start looking for another plane.

Although the downed aircraft was not destroyed, its location makes recovery challenging. Mr Cornea said he will leave the matter to his insurance company.