Image: 6ABC
A pilot who took an airplane without permission from a banner-towing company in Cape May, New Jersey, was later seen flying erratically over a nearby neighborhood, then landed illegally on a secured Coast Guard beach and fled, according to local news reports. Barbara Tomalino, president of Paramount Air Service, told reporters one of her employees took a Piper PA-12 without authorization. “We didn’t even realize it was gone,” she said. Video posted online shows the airplane flying low above the waves, while banking quickly back and forth. The beach landing was caught on tape by the Coast Guard’s closed-circuit cameras about 8 p.m. on Sunday. Witnesses told officials they saw the pilot flee the scene on foot.
Some photos posted online show the airplane nose-down in the sand on Sunday evening. Monday morning, local news videos showed the airplane still on the beach, upright and apparently undamaged. The Coast Guard said in a statement on Monday morning the training center adjacent to the beach was “on a heightened posture until the incident is resolved.” All units were searching for the missing pilot, the statement said. Later in the day, local news reported that heightened security had been relaxed. Eric Springer, Tomalino’s son, who also works for Paramount, told local reporters he could not yet release the name of the employee who took the plane, but added that he would “definitely like to have a conversation with him.”
