Bob CollinsYou’re a 17-year-old kid, alone in an airplane a few thousand feet above the ground and a wheel on your airplane falls off. What do you do?
It happened in Beverly, Mass., just outside of Boston, and while it might be tempting to say it was no sweat for Maggie Taraska, who was a student pilot flying solo, her voice tells a different story.
She landed safely, but not before illuminating the heroism of a government worker, the one in the tower on the ground.
“I was really scared at first,” Maggie told a news conference this week.
Her flight instructor, John Singleton, was in the air with another student when he heard the radio calls, so he landed and “hustled over to the tower” to talk Maggie through the ordeal. Hero.
Maggie planned to go flying again yesterday, she told a news conference on Monday.
Maggie Taraska, a 17-year-old student pilot, managed to carefully land a single-engine plane after part of its landing gear fell off. https://t.co/1K19OGom63 pic.twitter.com/EAVh1jUtcj
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) September 11, 2018
“I still have a few butterflies,” Maggie said, “we’ll see how it goes. I will do my best and try not to stress out.”
“Bad things happen all the time and it can’t deter you from doing what you want to do or doing what you love,” she said.
(h/t: Michael Wells)
