"This might be crazy," pilot Jason Maloney asked an air traffic controller during the flight, "but are we allowed to land on the beach?"
Turns out Maloney could not be talked out of landing a small plane on a Queens beach near John F Kennedy Airport (AUDIO BELOW).
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.
Both passengers and the pilot survived the landing without injury.
"This might be crazy, 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?" Maloney said.
After some angling, he just told the controller, "Uh, we have a sick passenger, so we're going to land on the beach, but we're not going to declare an emergency."
The New York Times reports that Maloney seemed uncharacteristically 'relaxed' during the whole ordeal.
Twice, upon receiving authorization to fly below 500 feet along the shoreline, the pilot replied, "Roger," but stretched it out and pronounced it, "rod-jaaah," according to the recording. He also told the controller, who was nearby at Kennedy Airport monitoring outgoing flights, "Just let us know if we're up in your grill, you know?"
Maloney later said he got the idea for the landing from the reality show "Flying Wild Alaska," no matter what an air traffic controller told him.
Maloney's joyriding antics could cost him his pilot license and he might also be fined.
"He doesn't sound drunk. He doesn't sound stoned. He sounds like a jerk," a law enforcement source told the Post.
LISTEN to Maloney's correspondence with air traffic control: