For a lucky student pilot, a lesson in safety almost came at a cataclysmic cost.
"It's obviously a little frightening when the engine dies in the middle of a flight, you know," Michael Pastore said.
16-year-old Pastore was one of two students in the middle of his flight lesson over a Long Island beach when he realized there was a big problem with the plane on Monday.
Luckily, Pastore was not alone. Accompanied by another student pilot and his 26-year-old flight instructor, Brandon Sax, Pastore tried restarting the engine.
When that failed, Sax immediately took over the controls and glided the plane while descending over Robert Moses State Park Beach. As the plane came down for an emergency landing, it flipped over itself while the windows smashed around the group.
"At the end of the day we all want to walk away, so do the students," said Sax.
Pastore added, "Everything was destroyed, and we actually had to unbuckle our seat belts from the ceiling and climb out of the airplane as it happened."
Sax's mother Shanti heard about the incident on the news, before finding out that it was her son in the plane.
"It brought tears to my eyes and I said 'Thank God'," Mrs. Sax recounted.
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Luckily, her son and his two students escaped with only a few scratches.
