‘There wasn’t time to be afraid:’ Pilot speaks after Oak Island plane crash

OAK ISLAND, NC (WWAY) — We have new details about a plane crash that happened in Oak Island over the weekend.  

On Monday, WWAY spoke with the pilot of that plane, who survived the crash. 

Mark Finkelstein has been flying for 17 years and says what was supposed to be a short flight quickly turned into a nightmare. 

Finkelstein says with the cooler weather over the weekend, he decided to take a short 20–30 minute flight in his small single engine aircraft, taking off from Cape Fear Regional Jetport. 

He says conditional were ideal, with low wind and clear skies—but then, his engine started running abnormally.  

Finkelstein says he started to turn around to land when his engine abruptly shut off.  

Knowing he couldn’t glide to the jetport, he initially planned to land on the beach, but with so many people out on the sands, he made a split-second decision to land on the water.  

“Once it stopped, I just said, ‘Okay, I’m really going to be doing a water landing,’ you know, there’s no alternative at this point,” Finkelstein recalled. 

Finkelstein crashed near the Oak Island Pier just after 7:30 p.m.  

“I also, as per training, opened the door on my pilot’s side so that it would be easier to get out, and that was my focus,” he said. “There really, there wasn’t time to be afraid, you know? It was just about trying to do the best I could under the circumstances.” 

Finkelstein says within moments, rescue boats arrived to help him. 

“I was having trouble getting out of the plane, and so, literally within minutes of touching down, the Oak Island Water Rescue folks were there,” he said. 

Miraculously, Finkelstein walked away with just a small cut on his leg  

He says after the crash, hundreds of people reached out to wish him well.  

“People who had, you know, maybe seen some of the posts that I had done online over time about my little flying experiences, and they just reached out to me,” Finkelstein said. “So, you know, that has been an extremely wonderful silver lining to this.” 

WWAY reached out to the FAA, who says an investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of the engine failure.