Sound Familiar?

Plane crash off Hyannis stuns beachgoers
Pilot swims away with no injuries after engine fails

By Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | August 6, 2006

Sandy Griffin was sitting comfortably in a small sailboat off Hyannis yesterday when she heard the sound of an engine sputtering.

She looked up to see a small red and white single-engine plane carrying an advertising banner descend rapidly toward the water.

The plane flew just a few feet over a man paddling in a kayak, she said, and according to police touched down on an isolated part of Kalmus Beach three times before it crashed nose first into the ocean, not far from hundreds of stunned beachgoers .

Griffin, a nurse's assistant from Falmouth, managed to take pictures as her 26-year-old daughter screamed and her 23-year-old son sat in stunned silence.

``It was nerve-racking," she said a few hours later yesterday, in a telephone interview. Minutes after the splashy nose dive , she saw a man furiously swimming away from the plane as rescue boats rushed to the scene.

The crash occurred shortly before 1 p.m. near the village of Hyannis. The pilot was the only person aboard and was not injured, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Murray.

Barnstable Police identified the pilot as Matthew Benard, who is 27 and lives in Melrose. He has been a licensed pilot since 2001, said Barnstable sergeant Ben Baxter , who helped fish Benard out of the water.

``He was upset," Baxter said. ``He was full of adrenaline."

Benard was taken to Cape Cod Hospital as a precautionary measure and released, Baxter said .

Christy Mihos, the independent gubernatorial candidate, was on the deck of his Cape Cod home, about to bite into a roast beef and blue cheese sandwich when he saw the plane go into the water.

``My wife and I were watching," Mihos said. ``You could tell something was terribly wrong." He said the Hyannis harbormaster towed the plane to a sandbar.

``It's a miracle the way the thing went in [that] the pilot is OK," he said.

Mihos said he and his son rushed to their inflatable boat and sped off toward the accident to rescue the pilot. But the Coast Guard beat them to it, Mihos said in a phone interview.

Mihos, who stayed in the water for about an hour to make sure oil did not drip into the ocean, said he never got to finish his sandwich.