Helicopter carrying WWE’s Shane McMahon makes emergency ocean landing

GILGO BEACH, N.Y. (AP) — A helicopter carrying the son of World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon made an emergency landing Wednesday in the ocean off New York, and neither the pilot nor passenger were hurt.

Shane McMahon, also a WWE executive, was the passenger in the Robinson R 44 helicopter that came down in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island’s Gilgo Beach late Wednesday morning. The red aircraft could be seen bobbing on its bright yellow pontoons as small boats circled about a half-mile south of the beach.

“It was very unnerving,” McMahon said to reporters later. But the pilot “was super calm which made me super calm and we landed perfectly.”

He later expressed his thanks to the pilot and emergency responders and tweeted: “I’d like to thank the man upstairs for looking out this morning.”

Shane McMahon’s mother is Linda McMahon, who heads the Small Business Administration in President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the helicopter had taken off from Westchester County Airport in White Plains. The pilot issued a mayday call before going into the water, and a commercial flight heading to Kennedy International Airport heard it and relayed it to FAA controllers at a radar facility.

It was not yet clear what went wrong.

In an unrelated incident, a Cessna C206 that had taken off from a Long Island airport and was heading to New Jersey made a precautionary landing in the westbound lane of the Sunrise Highway. The pilot was the only person on board.