Pilot's weird excuses to land on Queens beach
He just wanted to go to the beach!
Joyriding pilot Jason Maloney made every loopy, bizarre excuse in the book to air-traffic controllers to justify setting down his single-engine Piper in shallow water off the Rockaways shoreline Monday evening -- while dodging giant passenger jetliners taking off from Kennedy Airport in the process.
In the oddball transmissions, Maloney, 24, claimed he landed because he had a sick passenger or because his engine was "a little teeeensy bit rough" -- although he made a series of seemingly implausible excuses to land on the sand.
"Whooooa . . . What if I want to hide from you?" he radioed after a controller said radar showed his plane east of Jones Beach.
"This might be crazy," Maloney radioed a few minutes later. "But are we allowed to land on the beach?"
"I don't think so, unless it was an emergency," the controller answered.
"I'm a paramedic, uhhh, is there anyone I can ask?" he responded, before asking, "Any private beaches around?"
The transmissions were odd from the get-go.
Soon after taking off from Republic Airport in Farmingdale, Maloney asked if he could land his plane with its two passengers -- Clarke Oler, 22, and Chelsea Protter, 21, both Long Islanders -- at JFK.
He said he wanted to "drop a pastor off at JFK who is doing some medical mission work. Where would I drop him off at your airport?"
The controller advised Maloney to check with the Port Authority.
After Maloney finally landed -- without declaring an emergency -- he incredibly didn't understand why his stunt enraged FAA officials.
"It happens in Alaska all the time!" he told cops, sources said.
"Welcome to New York," a cop replied.
Maloney's high jinks could cost him his pilot's license, and he might be fined.
"He doesn't sound drunk. He doesn't sound stoned. He sounds like a jerk. He was looking for somebody to tell him to do that -- land on the water," a law-enforcement source said after listening to the audio recording.
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